Google Shopping & product feed management
In Shopping, the product feed decides which searches you appear for. We fix product data, listing-group structure and margin-aware budget splits so your Shopping spend follows the products that actually sell, as part of how we run client Google Ads management and paid search.
£160M+ in ad spend managedOne product, before and after enrichment
Google matches products to searches from the data you send. Enrichment changes which auctions you can enter.
Walking Boots
Merrell Moab 3 GTX Walking Boots, Men’s, Waterproof, Olive, UK 8–12
Most underperforming Shopping accounts do not have a bidding problem, they have a feed problem. Google decides which queries your products show for from the product data you send, not from keywords you choose. Thin titles, missing identifiers and one undifferentiated "all products" campaign quietly cap how often you appear and push budget to the wrong SKUs. Get the feed right and impression share, relevance and return move before you touch a bid.
Product feed optimisation and enrichment
There are no keywords in Shopping. The product feed decides which searches you appear for, what the ad shows and what you pay, and the same feed now powers Performance Max, free listings and the AI shopping surfaces beyond Google. This is where we spend our time, with a toolkit built for it.
Title and attribute optimisation
Titles rewritten around how buyers actually search: brand, product type, model, size, colour and material in the order that wins the query. Attributes filled to the maximum Google will read, because every empty field is an auction not entered.
AI-assisted enrichment with FeedGen
For large catalogues we use FeedGen, Google's open-source feed-enrichment tool from the Google Marketing Solutions team, to generate improved titles, descriptions and missing attributes from existing product data at catalogue scale. Every generated change is reviewed before it ships, so the AI does the volume and a specialist keeps the judgement.
Feed rules and supplemental feeds
Source data is rarely perfect, and replatforming to fix it is rarely justified. Merchant Center feed rules and supplemental feeds patch identifiers, normalise values and add custom labels without touching the site, which keeps enrichment fast and reversible.
Identifier hygiene
GTINs, MPNs and brand values checked and corrected across the catalogue. Wrong or missing identifiers quietly remove products from eligibility, and they are one of the most common faults we find in a first feed audit.
Custom labels for commercial control
Margin bands, stock priority, seasonality and bestseller flags applied as custom labels, so campaign structure can follow the commercial plan: protect the lines that make money, clear the lines that need to move.
Monitoring, not set-and-forget
Feeds break silently: a site update renames a field, prices drift out of sync, availability lags. We monitor item-level disapprovals, price and availability mismatches and coverage drops so problems are fixed before they cost a weekend of sales.
The feed work compounds: cleaner data improves Performance Max retail serving, free listings and even how products surface in AI shopping results, from the same enrichment effort.
Fixing Merchant Center errors and disapprovals
Merchant Center is where Shopping accounts quietly lose money. Diagnostics get checked as routine, because each fault class below caps the account in a way no bid change can fix. Deeper Merchant Center work has its own page: Merchant Center management.
Item disapprovals
Policy flags, image issues, missing required attributes or mismatched product data.
Why it matters: Every disapproved product is a product with zero impressions. Reinstating them recovers revenue that never shows up as a "problem" in campaign reports.
Price and availability mismatches
The feed says one price, the landing page says another, usually a sync-timing or currency formatting fault.
Why it matters: Google suspends items, or eventually accounts, for persistent mismatches. Automatic item updates and tighter sync schedules keep eligibility safe.
Weak product type and category data
Products lumped under generic categories, or google_product_category left to guesswork.
Why it matters: Better query matching and cleaner campaign segmentation, so reporting can say which ranges make money.
Account-level warnings
Missing shipping and returns settings, unverified details, or policy issues on the site itself.
Why it matters: These escalate to suspensions if ignored. Resolving them early is cheap; recovering a suspended Merchant Center is not.
Google Shopping campaign structure
Once the feed is right, structure decides how well it converts to profit. These are the calls we make with you, and the reasoning behind each.
Standard Shopping, Performance Max, or both
Standard Shopping keeps query-level control, bid control and clean reporting. Performance Max extends the same feed across YouTube, Display, Gmail and Discover in exchange for less control. Most retail accounts run both: Standard Shopping where control earns money on key lines, PMax for incremental reach, with brand exclusions so neither takes credit for demand you already owned.
Performance Max managementBuy clicks through a CSS partner
UK and European advertisers can run Shopping through a Comparison Shopping Service instead of Google Shopping directly, which reduces the effective cost of the same clicks in the same auctions. It is one of the few genuine discounts in paid media, and we set it up as standard for ecommerce accounts.
How CSS pricing worksPoint budget at margin
A blended target starves the products that make money and feeds the ones that only look good. Custom labels split the catalogue by margin band, stock priority and lifecycle, values flow into bidding from accurate conversion tracking, and listing groups let budget follow contribution. That is how Shopping supports profit rather than a vanity return figure.
Conversion tracking for real valuesWhat we manage
- Merchant Center Next setup and disapproval fixes
- Product title and description optimisation
- GTIN, MPN, brand and identifier hygiene
- Feed rules and supplemental feeds
- Listing-group structure by product and margin
- Margin-aware and new-customer budget splits
- Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) to cut CPCs
- Shopping, Performance Max and free listings
Go deeper
- Clean Digital PPC best practice: Google ShoppingOur practitioner guide to running Google Shopping well.
- CSS: all you need to know about Comparison Shopping ServicesWhere a CSS partner fits, and how it cuts Shopping CPCs.
- Google Shopping vehicle listingsA worked example of feed-led Shopping for automotive.
- Get your products into ChatGPT ShoppingHow clean feeds feed newer AI shopping surfaces.
Related services & tools
Common questions
What teams ask about google shopping & feed before they hand over an account.
See where your Shopping feed is leaving money behind
Get a free senior review of your Merchant Center feed and Shopping structure, where products are disapproved or under-titled, where budget is going to low-margin lines, and what to fix first, from a Google Premier Partner managing £160M+ in ad spend.
- Where budget produced no profitable return in the last 90 days
- Whether your conversion tracking and values are reliable
- How much of your performance is genuinely incremental vs demand you already had
- Which campaigns are worth more budget and which to cut
“A useful PPC review should make the next decision obvious: what to cut, what to protect, and what is worth more investment.”
Fraser Smith, Chief Strategy Officer, reviews every submissionFree senior PPC review
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