December 18, 2018

Written by Tim Colucci

Advertiser Q&A: Google Product Feed Optimization

In recent weeks, I have been blogging about tools such as showcase shopping ads that help advertisers succeed on Google. I would be remiss if I did not also touch upon a fundamental approach to ensuring your inventory is visible in your ads that appear on Google: product feed optimization.

What is Google product feed optimization?

Google product feed optimization refers to the steps that businesses take within the Google feed to ensure their advertisements work most effectively with Google’s algorithm. The more optimized your product content is, the more likely that your products are going to show up in paid search results when people look for products to buy.

Optimizing your feed can make your ads more visible. If you make your product feed accurate, your ads will be more aligned with how people search.

What’s the best way to optimize your products?

  • What’s really crucial is providing Google accurate metadata such as the title of your product, price, and color. It’s crucial to get the details right, down to size and color of clothing if you sell it. You cannot have duplicate keywords in the titles of your products, either. Avoid lengthy titles; otherwise, the customer may not see the actual product name. In addition, choose your keywords to position them to the front of the title. These are just some examples of minding your metadata.
  • Make sure you sync your product information with any paid search campaigns you are running. If you are running a 70-percent off holiday cards paid search campaign, make sure that message is consistent with what appears in your data feed.
  • Be complete. If you share different sizes of winter coats, make that data available. Better yet, list each as a separate product.

How do advertisers make sure Google has the right content to optimize?

A feed company or an agency (such as True Interactive) can put the data together for you. You supply raw data such as product description, product ID, links to relevant images, pricing. and landing page. Your feed company or agency partner then works with Google to ensure your product inventory appears where it should in your paid ads.

Should everyone be optimizing their product feed?

If you are advertising a physical product online, yes, you should absolutely optimize your product feed, whether you are a business-to-business or business-to-consumer brand.

Unfortunately, many brand mangers find the process of optimizing their feed to be tedious and unworthy of attention. But don’t make that mistake. If you don’t optimize your product feed, your advertising spend will be wasted because your competitors’ products will rank higher than yours (so long as they optimize their product feeds). And your customers won’t know about your products. So make sure you mind your product feeds. If you need help, contact True Interactive. We have deep experience with digital advertising including optimizing product feeds.

Photo source: https://pixabay.com/en/bar-ipad-mockup-business-computer-621033/