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Setting up Google Shopping

Setting up Google Shopping

Google Shopping is another tool that helps sellers and buyers successfully find each other.

The service allows online stores to show not just advertising for their company or products in the search results, but also a mini-card for the product with an active link to its webpage.

The modern format of Google Shopping was formed in 2012, and the first version of the service was launched ten years earlier. The popularity of Google Shopping among advertisers continues to grow, according to ongoing research:

  • From 2016 to 2017, the share of advertising in Google Shopping grew from 25% to 34% (SIDECAR).
  • In November 2018, advertisers’ spending on Google Shopping increased by 17% compared to the same period in 2017 (SIDECAR).
  • Google Shopping accounted for 76.4% of retail ad spend in 2018, with shopping campaigns generating 85.3% of all paid clicks (Adthena).

As Google Shopping continues to gain momentum, it’s time to learn how to set up the service and take advantage of all its benefits.

3 Steps for Setting up Google Shopping

All you need to do Google Shopping is:

  1. Register in the Google Merchant Center and link the account with Google Ads
  2. Create and upload a feed into Google Merchant Center
  3. Set up a shopping campaign in Google Ads

Before going on with the setup, check whether your store meets these requirements:

  • Work on the HTTPS protocol
  • Selling goods that do not violate Google’s policies (more about prohibited content here https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6008942?hl=en),
  • Availability of goods in stock.
  • A working shopping cart on the site and the ability to pay for the order online.
  • The presence of contacts on the site and a page with available information about exchanging and returning products.

If you have confidently checked each box next to each item, then you can go on to setting things up.

1) Registering in Google Merchant Center and linking the account to Google Ads

Google Merchant Center (GMC) is useful for retail services, through which you can organize advertising for each product in your online shop in Google without huge costs.

If you are accessing the Google Merchant Center for the first time, you’ll need to provide basic information about your shop (location, store name, website link, and contact information) when you register.

In the field for the store’s name, it’s important not to put in the legal name, but the ‘actual’ name by that the buyers know it by (since this will appear in the ad). For example, you are Ivanov LLC, in the header of the online store of which the store “Everything for the Home” is written. In this case, in the field with the name of the store, you should write “Everything for the Home.”

Don’t forget to link your GMC and Google Ads accounts before you start setting up.

Setting up Google Shopping

Enter your Google Ads Client ID. You can copy it into your account settings.

Setting up Google Shopping

You can verify the link in Google Ads by going to the ‘Linked Accounts’ tab.

Setting up Google Shopping

The whole process shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes, after which you can go on to create a feed.

2) Creating and Uploading Feeds in Google Merchant Center

A feed is a file containing information about products on your site. It can be either in text format (TXT) or in a spreadsheet format (XML).

Information about the product is displayed in the feed according to attributes, some of which are mandatory like:

  • id – unique product ID.
  • title
  • description
  • link – ссылка на товар.
  • image link – ссылка на основное фото товара.
  • availability
  • price

Each attribute has a number of mandatory requirements. For example, the “Title” should contain no more than 150 characters, and the product description should not be advertising, the image size cannot exceed 64 megapixels. Before you create a feed, be sure to review the Google support attribute requirements: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7052112?visit_id=636835264965210196-1496583724&rd=1.

Using the same link, you’ll find a list of optional attributes, as well as mandatory ones for certain product categories.

этот поможет вам сократить стоимость клика и получить выгодное место в выдаче.

It’s important to understand that the quality of an advertising campaign depends on how well the feed is filled in. Watch out for additional attributes (even those that at first glance seem insignificant), this one will help you reduce the cost of a click and get a profitable place in SERP.

How do you make a Feed?

There are a few ways to make a product feed:

  1. You can create your own feed based on an example which you can download here in either TXT or XLS format.
  2. Use the services of a programmer who will generate a feed in XML format from the site.
  3. Make a manual feed in Google Sheets. This option is beneficial for stores with a smaller product line. It eliminates the cost of a programmer and gives you the ability to automatically pull up data in the Merchant Center.
  4. Use the feed for Yandex Market (if you created it earlier). This can be converted in the Merchant Center settings. However, with this option, a minimum of attributes will be taken into account.

After entering and verifying all your data, you can upload the feed to GMC. To do this, go to the Products tab, then go to Feeds and add a new one.

Setting up Google Shopping

During the first part of setting up, specify the country of sale and language, and check the box next to Shopping ads, which will mean showing ads in shopping campaigns.

Setting up Google Shopping

In the second part, you need to choose a feed upload method. Choose “Download” if the feed was generated for you by a programmer or you made it yourself according to a template and saved it to your computer. The Google Sheets option works best for those who chose the third method of creating a feed using Google Sheets.

Setting up Google Shopping

The maximum file size must not exceed 4 GB. If you’re uploading archived data in any of the available GZ, ZIP, BZ2 formats, the size of the original file must also not exceed 4 GB.

On the Diagnostics tab, you can see a detailed report on the uploaded and rejected products. The maximum period for moderation is 3 days.

If all the products have been uploaded, you can proceed to setting up a shopping campaign.

3) Setting up Shopping Campaigns in Google Ads

Open a Google Ads account and create a new campaign by selecting the Sales goals and the product type.

Setting up Google Shopping

After clicking the “Continue” button, two additional blocks will open. In the first one, you need to specify the country of sale for the goods and the GMC account (since we previously established a connection between the accounts, it will come up automatically). In the second block, it specifies the campaign subtype. A simple Shopping Campaign unlocks all the features of Google Shopping based on the previous steps. Smart Campaigns combine the power of a shopping campaign and remarketing in Google Display Networks. However, for these to work, you need to also set up conversions and install a remarketing tag on your site.

Setting up Google Shopping

Next, go to the standard settings for the new campaign:

  • coming up with a name.
  • choosing a bidding strategy and a daily budget.
  • Specifying the region for displaying ads.

Pay attention to the opportunities to choose a priority. The setting is relevant if you have more than one shopping campaign and they have the same products.

Setting up Google Shopping

Next, create a new ad group, specifying its name and rate per click. There’s no need to create separate ads as they will be generated automatically.

Main Benefits of Google Shopping

Google Shopping is effective, most of all, for large online stores that will be able to immediately provide network users with the main information about the product in response to a search, thus shortening their path to buying it.

Other reasons to try Google Shopping:

  • Low cost per click compared to search campaigns.
  • Saving time since you don’t need to prescribe ads for each product.
  • A better format of shopping ads for sales compared to the standard ad copy.

However, it’s worth remembering that by providing almost limitless opportunities for advertisers, Google sets strict requirements for the relevance of advertising and the quality of the online stores. If certain requirements are not met, the Google Merchant Center may block the account.

In order to prevent this from happening and to time spent worth your while, we recommend that you carefully study the requirements of Google and make sure that your store meets them, or entrust the setup of Google Shopping to the Web-Sci internet marketing agency. We not only keep all the requirements of Google in mind but also know how to work with them.

Even if you work with only one region, and not with the whole country, we will help you successfully pass through moderation. With a professionally designed feed, you will be able to drive low-cost clicks and conversions and reduce advertising costs while maintaining profitable positions.

With Web-Sci you can get the most out of Google Shopping!

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