Ecommerce
Optimizing Product Feeds for Google Shopping
In Shopping and Performance Max, your product feed does the job keywords do in search. The attributes that matter most and how to improve them.
BenchMarketing editorial team Updated October 2, 2026 3 min readShare
Shopping ads have no keywords. Google decides which searches your products appear for by reading your product feed in Merchant Center. A thin or messy feed means your products show for the wrong searches, or not at all, no matter how you set bids.
The attributes that matter most
- Title: the strongest signal for which searches you match. Lead with what people search for: brand, product type, then the attributes that distinguish it (size, colour, material, model).
- Product type and Google product category: tell Google where the product sits. Use the most specific category available.
- GTIN and brand: for branded products, a correct GTIN connects your listing to Google's product catalogue and helps it appear for model-specific searches.
- Images: a clean main image on a plain background; lifestyle images as additional images.
- Price and availability: must match the landing page exactly, or products get disapproved.
- Description: secondary to the title but still read. Cover use cases and specifications in plain language.
Titles that earn clicks
A title like "Classic Tee" tells Google and the shopper very little. "Organic Cotton Crew Neck T-Shirt, Men's, Navy, Medium" matches far more searches and shows the shopper it is what they want. Put the most important words first, because long titles are cut off.
Use custom labels to bid on what matters
Custom labels (custom_label_0 to custom_label_4) let you tag products by anything you choose: margin band, best sellers, seasonality, clearance. Then you can split campaigns or set different targets so high-margin products get more budget than low-margin ones.
Fix feeds without changing your store
Supplemental feeds and feed rules in Merchant Center let you rewrite titles, fill missing attributes and add labels without touching your product database. Start with your best sellers; improving a few dozen titles that drive most revenue often matters more than fixing every product.
What good looks like
| Category | CTR | CPC | ROAS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel & Accessories | 1.52% | $0.64 | 3.50x |
| Electronics | 1.18% | $1.24 | 2.80x |
| Home & Garden | 1.44% | $0.78 | 3.40x |
| Health & Beauty | 1.61% | $0.72 | 3.80x |
| Sports & Outdoors | 1.38% | $0.81 | 3.20x |
| Auto Parts | 1.22% | $0.98 | 2.95x |
| Toys & Games | 1.55% | $0.58 | 4.10x |
The Google Shopping median CTR is 1.35%. A product with plenty of impressions and a CTR well under that usually has a weak title, a poor image or an uncompetitive price.
See Google Shopping benchmarks and our take on Performance Max, which uses the same feed.
About the figures
Benchmark figures in this article come from the BenchMarketing dataset and update when the benchmark pages do. Each benchmark page lists its sources and period; see our methodology.
Sources
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