Do your Shopping ads show up when you search for your most relevant keywords?

While Google does a reasonable job of working out what the keywords should be to show your inventory, it is being worked out by software, and they won’t always get it exactly right. There are a couple of things you need to make sure of, in order to get better results, especially from Google Shopping campaigns.

• Unless you’re running a Smart campaign, where Google hides your search terms from you, you can see the specific terms that lead to your ads showing up in Google. Are they the correct kinds of terms? If not, then you’ve got a bit of work to do. You’ll need to set negative keywords on your Shopping campaigns, but also you’ll need to get cracking on your SEO program. There are two places where the SEO is important; on your website (particularly your product pages) and in your Google Merchant Centre. (Google Merchant Centre supplies the data that drives the ads).
• Once you’re showing up for the right terms, you need to evaluate which inventory is showing up for those terms. For example, let’s say you have the same kind of product but you sell a cheap version and an expensive version. Which one you do want to show up in the ads for that term? The best result is both, but you should prioritize, because if you don’t Google will prioritize for you. Assume only one will show up for any particular search. This can especially be an issue if you release a new SKU and Google hasn’t got much data on it yet. Google will continue showing your old SKUs well past the product launch (maybe giving your new product no air time at all) unless you give the new product some budget of its own to ensure it gets visibility.