You’ve probably heard that Google Shopping (sometimes called Product Listing Ads, it’s the same thing for our purposes) should be included as part of your marketing campaign. You weren’t lied to. Google Shopping is an incredibly powerful tool for reaching shoppers on the internet. We’d bet dollars to donuts that you’ve seen it at work before. As well as having its own section in Google, Google Shopping is what puts those products at the top and to the right of your search results.
But how does it work? What makes those ads show up when and where they do? Do they really drive traffic to your page or is just another hole to throw marketing bucks at and hope it works?
We’ll get to that soon enough, but rest assured of one thing. It works. Really well.
How Does Google Shopping Work?
Google Shopping uses product attributes to determine which products to show to which users. These function very similarly to keywords, but are distinct in Google’s eyes. These attributes are controlled through your Google Merchant account and include things like brand, product description, price range, color, gender and more.
When customers search for things that match your product description, it will appear on the top or on the right of Google’s search pages. These ads can also include information about sales, store locations, whether it’s in stock or not and user reviews of your product. Which ads show up when depends on two factors: What your maximum PPC bid is and what Google determines your campaign’s quality to be.
Where Do I Start?
You’ll need a Google Merchant and an AdWords account with some money allotted for Google Shopping to get started. From there, you’ll have to upload as much product information as you can through a data feed. You should try to fill out everything possible, since this is what helps you accurately target shoppers. Make sure it matches the information you have on your website since this is where customers will end up if they decide to click on the ad. You don’t want to disappoint customers with a higher price than the one they just saw or drive shoppers away by setting too-high of a price in the ad.
This is just the start. Your Google Shopping campaign will be underway after you complete all these steps, but it probably won’t get you the results you’re hoping for. There’s hours and hours of work that you can and should spend optimizing your campaign. It’s enough to take up full weeks of work, and you’ll have to constantly revisit it once that’s over to make sure you’re staying on top of the ball. You should definitely add Google Shopping to your marketing campaign, but you may want to consider hiring an outside organization to do it for you (we might know someone that can help).
What’s in it for Me?
There’s a lot of reasons why Google Shopping is an important part of of your digital marketing campaign. For starters, it’s relatively inexpensive. You can decide how much a click is worth to you and set your maximum bid based on that. Plus, if Google determines that you run a good campaign and gives you a high quality score, you’ll receive a discount on your CPC (the inverse is true if your campaign stinks). Over time, you’ll see which phrases bring in the most conversions and can optimize your Shopping campaign by allocating more of your budget towards the words or phrases that bring you traffic.
Along with being a cost-effective way to drive traffic to your website, it also puts your products right where people are searching for them. Everyone researches what they’re buying online first, regardless of whether they’re going to end up buying in online or in a physical store. With Google Shopping, your ads appear smack dab at the top of the page, making it the first thing users see on the search results page. All you need is a well-optimized campaign and a decent budget to succeed.
Simply put, the value you get for what you spend is too good to pass up.
Building a Feed That Actually Wins Impressions
Google Shopping is won or lost in the product feed, not the bid. Because shoppers never type a keyword they can choose — the system matches their query to your product data — the title and attributes are doing the work a keyword would do in a search ad. Write titles that front-load the terms a buyer actually searches: brand, product type, and the distinguishing attributes (size, color, model, "for women," "waterproof"). Fill in every available attribute — GTIN, MPN, condition, color, size, age group, gender, product category — because each one is another way the system can correctly match and qualify your product. Use the additional images field, keep prices and availability in exact sync with the site, and fix disapprovals in Merchant Center promptly, since a disapproved item simply does not show.
Structuring Campaigns and Bids
Once the feed is clean, structure matters. Segmenting products into separate campaigns or ad groups — by margin, by brand, or by best-sellers versus the long tail — lets you spend more aggressively where the return is strongest and hold back where it is not. Add negative keywords to stop paying for searches that will never convert (for example, excluding "free" or competitor-repair queries). Google's automated bidding strategies such as Target ROAS can work well once you have enough conversion history, but they are only as good as the conversion tracking feeding them, so verify that purchases and their values are being recorded accurately before handing over control.
Performance Max and Where Shopping Sits Today
Standalone Shopping campaigns still exist, but much of this inventory is now served through Performance Max, which combines Shopping, Search, Display, and YouTube placements around a product feed and audience signals. The fundamentals in this article do not change — a precise, complete feed and accurate conversion tracking are still what separate a profitable account from a money pit — but expect to manage performance through asset groups, audience signals, and ROAS targets rather than manual keyword-style controls. The strategic takeaway is the same one the original article reached: the value is real, but it comes from disciplined optimization, not from switching the campaign on and walking away.
Editorial note: this article predates Performance Max and the AdWords-to-Google-Ads rebrand; the mechanics above (feed-driven matching, Merchant Center, Target ROAS, Performance Max) reflect how Google Shopping operates today, while the original strategic argument for using it is unchanged.
Ready to give your ads prime real estate on the world’s most popular search engine? Talk to us about managing your Google Shopping campaign.