These ads are based on products listed in what is known as a Merchant Center – a Google provided platform where online businesses manage the appearance of their ecommerce products and make changes to their online listings as needed. You can optimize your product data feed using the title, description, and other fields to influence who sees your ad. Product attributes and details indicated in Merchant Center data feeds are used to determine if your ad will be shown next to a particular result. If you want to increase the chances of someone clicking on your ad, you need to provide the most accurate information possible. 

Adding Your Products – Product Feed

The product feed is an essential tool for the online store owner wanting to set up a Shopping Campaign. It allows you to import all the necessary information about your products, including images, titles, descriptions, prices, etc., in one place. However, you need to follow certain guidelines when uploading your product data. There are several ways to create your Google Shopping Feeds. You can either use an app, extension, tool, or manually create a spreadsheet. For Shopify users, the Shopify Google Shopping App is highly recommended as it is free and easy to install.

Uploading Product Inventory and Feed – Merchant Center

After your feed is ready, you can create a Google Merchant Center account When you are done with that, you have to claim and verify your store’s domain to prove that you own it. You can do this by using Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, or adding a meta tag to your website. This may sound a bit technical however it’s a one-time effort and the steps are outlined here.

Optimizing your Product Listings

While Google Shopping Ads uses uploaded product feeds to index search results, it pulls the featured images for each product from its corresponding retail site. Hence, it is important to optimize your product images and listings on your own site before you market them on Google. Being a visually rich experience as compared to usual Search Ads, your product photos are undoubtedly the most important part of any listing, and that will determine where shoppers may click and purchase. Google knows this and will refuse to run your campaign if the product images are of low quality.

For this matter, following Google’s image guidelines such as using a white, grey, or light-colored background; clean even lighting; and closeup shots are highly recommended. Other best practices include displaying clothing on the body, adding shadows to add depth, showcasing multiple views of your product, and including real people using it. If you’re selling your products on other marketplaces, these product image specifications may be applicable and are good to master.