In Shopping and Performance Max you don't pick keywords, Google reads your product feed and decides which searches to show you on. So the feed is the campaign. Fix these in order: product titles, product type & Google category, correct GTINs/identifiers, strong images, complete attributes, and custom labels for bidding. Feed work almost always beats bid tinkering.
Most underperforming Shopping and Performance Max accounts don't have a bidding problem, they have a feed problem. Because you never choose keywords, the data you send to Merchant Center is the only way to tell Google what you sell and who should see it. Here is what actually moves results, in the order we'd fix it.
1. Rewrite your product titles
The title is the single most important field in the feed. It carries the most weight for matching queries, and it's the first thing a shopper reads. The raw product name from your catalogue is rarely the best version.
Front-load the words people actually search, in a sensible order: brand → product type → key attributes (colour, size, material, model, quantity). A title like "Bship Merino Wool Base Layer, Men's, Long Sleeve, Navy, L" will reach far more relevant searches than "Base Layer Navy". Match the attribute order to how your category searches, and keep the most important words within the first 70 characters, which is roughly what shows before truncation.
2. Fix product type and Google product category
Two different fields, both worth getting right:
- Google product category is Google's own taxonomy. Set it as specifically as possible, the deeper and more accurate it is, the better Google understands the product.
- Product type is your category path (e.g. Apparel > Base layers > Merino). Google uses it as a strong signal, and it's invaluable for structuring campaigns and reporting.
3. Get identifiers right (GTIN, brand, MPN)
For branded, manufactured goods, correct GTINs help Google match your product to the exact item, unlock price benchmarking, and qualify you for richer placements. Rules that save pain:
- Use real GTINs. Invented or wrong ones are worse than none and trigger disapprovals.
- For genuinely custom or own-made products with no GTIN, set identifier exists = no rather than faking one.
- Always populate brand. Missing brand is a common, quiet cause of weak matching.
4. Treat images as a conversion lever
Your image is your ad creative in Shopping. Use the highest-resolution shot, on a clean background, that clearly shows the product. Avoid watermarks, promotional text or logos burned into the image, Google can disapprove these. Where your category rewards it, a lifestyle variant can lift click-through, but the main image should be clean and unambiguous.
5. Fill in every attribute you can
A sparse feed is an underperforming feed. The more accurate attributes you supply, the more ways Google can match and qualify your products:
- Availability and price, kept in sync with your site to avoid disapprovals and mismatches.
- Colour, size, material, pattern, gender, age group, essential for apparel and strongly recommended elsewhere.
- Sale price, which can surface price-drop annotations.
- Shipping and tax where relevant to your markets.
6. Add custom labels for bidding control
Custom labels are your own tags, invisible to Google's matching but powerful for your control. They're one of the few ways to inject business logic into otherwise automated campaigns. Common, high-value labels:
- Margin band (high / medium / low), so you can bid harder on profitable lines and cap the thin ones.
- Bestseller or new, to prioritise proven or launch products.
- Seasonal or clearance, to ring-fence budget when it matters.
Pair these with your break-even ROAS by margin band and you can stop treating every product as if it were equally worth the spend.
7. Exclude the products that shouldn't be advertised
Not every SKU deserves budget. Out-of-stock lines, near-zero-margin items, and products with weak data drag down account efficiency. Use supplemental feeds or rules to exclude or deprioritise them, a smaller, cleaner feed of products you actually want to sell usually outperforms a bloated one.
The order that matters
If you only do three things: rewrite titles, fix categories and identifiers, and clean up images and availability. Those alone resolve most disapprovals and unlock most of the matching upside. Custom labels and exclusions are the layer that turns a working feed into a profitable one.
Not sure where your feed is leaking? A free audit includes a look at your Merchant Center diagnostics and feed quality, and what to fix first.
