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The Google product feed has gone from being a back-end file to a front-line marketing tool. The feed now has as much to do with performance as budgets or bids for advertisers who use Shopping Ads or Performance Mac. The quality of your product data is what matters most for every click, impression, and sale.
Google's machine learning knows exactly where to put your products when the feed is clean and complete. When it isn't, campaigns stop. A lot of teams still think of the feed as a one-time setup. In reality, it's a living dataset that needs to be tuned, updated, and optimized if you want to get the same results every time.
The Google Merchant Center uses a Google product feed file to learn about your products and how you want them to be shown. It has all the important information, such as the product names, descriptions, pictures, prices, availability, categories, and identifiers like GTINs or MPNs. Merchant Center looks at that information and connects your products with what shoppers are looking for on Google Shopping, YouTube, and Discovery.
In real life, a product feed can be as simple as a spreadsheet or as complicated as an API that connects directly to your online store. In either case, the idea is the same: the feed is the way Google talks. Your products are easy to find if the language is clear and correct. If it isn't, your campaigns won't do well or won't be seen.
We've talked before about how to make and organize product feeds for online stores, and the same rules apply here, but Google's rules are even stricter.
Machine learning is now the basis for Google's ads. The more often your products show up, the better your feed will be. For instance, Performance Max uses almost all of its feed data to choose which product to show in which context.
Google can connect your products with shoppers who are ready to buy when your feed is set up correctly. When it isn't, the algorithm has to guess, and you pay for that guesswork with higher CPCs and less visibility.
Data and automation are what set growth-stage brands apart from those that aren't growing. That dynamic is happening in Merchant Center. Scaling teams treat their feeds like living, breathing infrastructure. Competitors are taking market share from teams that set them up once and then leave.
A lot of the best practices we've talked about for managing product feeds in AI-driven campaigns apply directly to this situation. Feeds are more than just technical needs; they are also performance levers.
Every piece of information in a product feed is important and tells Google something. Google's Merchant Center feed specifications make the requirements very clear. However, we're giving our blog readers a simple cheat sheet.
The most important thing in your feed. A title that is well-structured affects both relevance and click-through. Don't just think about "keyword stuffing." A good title naturally combines the brand, type of product, and key differences. For example, "Nike Air Zoom Pegasus Men's Running Shoes – Lightweight Trainers" is better than "Men's Sneakers." Use the actual search terms that customers use, add size, color, and gender when it's appropriate, and put the most important words at the beginning because mobile search cuts off titles quickly.
Descriptions are not filler text, we see them as mini landing pages within your feed. Google looks for more signals in them, and shoppers quickly look through them before clicking. The best descriptions use keywords and persuasive copy together. They should focus on the materials, benefits, and use cases. For example, "These men's running shoes are made with breathable mesh and Zoom Air cushioning to help you run faster and be comfortable all day" works better than just changing the title slightly. First, think about clarity. Second, think about keywords. Never think about fluff.
A lot of brands don't know how important images are. Merchant Center puts a lot of emphasis on high-quality images, and so do shoppers. Photos that are blurry, have watermarks, or are only of people can lower approval rates or CTRs. A clear, front-facing picture of your product on a white or clear background is the best. You should also include pictures of the product from different angles and in use in your listing. The better the picture, the better the performance, especially on mobile devices where pictures are everything.
Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) and Manufacturer Part Numbers (MPNs) are not optional; they are what makes Google able to match products. With GTINs, your products can get better listings, like Google Shopping ads that show reviews, price comparisons, and information about availability. You might not be able to get competitive placements without them. If your manufacturer doesn't give you GTINs, you can get them from GS1 and update your feed.
Taxonomy is the structure of your feed that you can't see. Your item will show up in the right place on Google if it is in the right product category tree. If it is in the wrong category, it will get wasted impressions or even worse, it will be disapproved. Always put products in the most specific category you can find. Instead of just going to "Apparel & Accessories > Shoes," go to "Apparel & Accessories > Shoes > Athletic Shoes > Running Shoes." The extra accuracy makes the ads more relevant and better at getting clicks.
Strategy comes into play when you make custom labels. They don't show to customers, but they let you group products within campaigns. Seasonality (like "Holiday 2025"), performance tiers (like "Best Seller" or "Low Margin"), and promotional buckets (like "Clearance") are some of the most common ways to use them. You can bid differently on high-margin and low-margin items, push seasonal products harder, or quickly change how much you spend during sales if you label things carefully. Brands that do well on Shopping use custom labels as tools to plan their campaigns.
When you optimize each attribute, Google has every reason to show your product instead of a competitor's, and shoppers have every reason to click when they see it.
Errors in Merchant Center aren't just annoying red flags on a dashboard. They show money that could have been made. No matter how much you spend on ads, a product that doesn't have a GTIN is basically invisible. A price that doesn't match is more than just a compliance issue; it makes people less likely to trust you when they're ready to buy. In ecommerce, where the difference between a click and a bounce is very small, these small differences can add up to big losses.
Here are some of the most common issues we see:
Fixing these things in a realistic way helps protect your income. Every problem you fix gets products back on the market. And Google's tips for fixing problems make the same point: accuracy and alignment are not up for debate.
After your feed is error-free, the next step is to make it better. This is where strong feeds give you an edge over your competitors.
Good titles and descriptions do two things at once. Titles are the exact words that people type into search engines, and descriptions give those words meaning that makes people want to click. The best titles put clarity and relevance first, and they combine brand, product type, and key features in a way that doesn't seem forced. Descriptions should do more than just list keywords. They should also point out what makes the product different, such as its materials, benefits, use cases, or unique value. When titles and descriptions work together, they help people find the listing in search results and get people to interact with it once they do.
Images are what make things work. Google gives higher priority to listings with clear, interesting images, and customers make quick decisions based on what they see. Product photos with a white or clear background that are high-resolution and not cluttered always do better than photos that are grainy, have watermarks, or are too stylized. Adding lifestyle photos to your listing will make people even more interested. In a mobile-first world where the image often takes up most of the screen, visuals are one of the most powerful tools you have.
Brand fields, GTINs, and MPNs are more than just administrative details; they are what makes you eligible. You might not be able to get your products into better places like Google Shopping carousels, product review modules, and price comparison listings without them. These identifiers also help Google match your products to relevant searches better. Brands that properly source or register GTINs through GS1 not only follow the rules, but they also get more exposure and better placement in competitive auctions.
With custom labels, you can make sure that your feed structure matches your business strategy. They don't show up to shoppers, but they give marketers a lot of control over how to design campaigns. By dividing products into groups based on seasonality, margin, best-seller status, or promotional buckets, you can bid and spend your money more wisely. For instance, you could push high-margin items harder, cut back on spending on clearance items, or quickly start seasonal campaigns. Custom labels turn your feed from a static list into a flexible framework for performance.
Managing feeds by hand gives you too many chances to make mistakes. Real-time automation makes sure that the prices, availability, and inventory levels in your feed always match those on your website. That alignment keeps account health in check, stops disapprovals, and stops wasting money on ads for items that are out of stock or priced wrong. Automation has become a key part of efficiency, as Forbes said in its 2025 performance marketing outlook. The less likely you are to make costly mistakes that could have been avoided, the more you automate feed updates.
After the basics are in place, the next step is to use advanced feed strategies that let you grow. These methods link your feed directly to how people shop, how the market works, and how you design your campaigns.
In categories that move quickly, prices and availability change every hour. Dynamic pricing tools automatically update your feed in real time to show changes in discounts, promotions, and competition. When you combine this with live inventory syncing, you get rid of one of the most common reasons for disapprovals: when what you show in your ad doesn't match what's really in stock. The result is promotions that go more smoothly, fewer wasted clicks, and a feed that always shows the truth.
Local inventory feeds help stores with physical locations turn digital interest into sales in person. They let you show people who are nearby what items are in stock at a certain store, along with pickup options and local deals. As people get used to shopping in different ways, these feeds make it easier to turn "near me" searches into visits to stores and extra sales.
Feeds are more than just data about products; they are a way to plan your strategy. You can focus on high-margin or high-AOV items while keeping clearance, seasonal, or long-tail products in separate campaigns by dividing them into performance tiers. This structure makes it possible to bid more intelligently, report more clearly, and allocate budgets more flexibly. Over time, it helps you figure out which product sets need more advertising and which ones need less.
Video is now the main way that people find things in Google's ecosystem, from YouTube Shorts to Discovery Ads. Customers want more than just still pictures; they want rich, visual content. The problem is making a lot of videos without raising the cost of creativity. Platforms like Marpipe let you make product-level videos right from your feed. This turns static assets into dynamic creative that is perfect for catalog campaigns. This method makes sure that your products are available in the formats that people actually use, while also making production more flexible.
Performance is the best way to tell if your feed is working or not. But raw numbers don't always tell the whole story unless you relate them to the quality of your data.
Impression share shows how often your products show up in auctions where they can be sold compared to your competitors. That gap isn't always about money if you're only showing up in 30% of the auctions you could. It's often because of the quality of the feed: missing GTINs, unclear titles, or wrong categories that keep Google from showing your listings. You can get more of the right queries if your feed is clean, which means you compete more often without raising bids.
Once your listing is live, CTR will tell you if shoppers are interested in it. If your CTR is lower than that of your competitors in your industry (for example, ecommerce benchmarks are around 1.9% for Shopping Ads), it usually means that the creative elements in the feed are weak. Shoppers will skip over you if your titles don't match what they're looking for or if your images look too generic. Changing titles and adding better pictures can raise CTR more than raising bids.
The conversion rate shows how well your listing and landing page match up. If clicks don't lead to sales, check to see if the prices are wrong, the product descriptions are unclear, or the lifestyle images make the item seem better than it is. A conversion rate of 1.5% to 3% is good for most types of retail. If you're well below that, it could mean that your feed is promising too much or not delivering enough when people get to your site.
ROAS connects everything. An optimized feed should make things more efficient by reducing wasted impressions, increasing CTRs, and improving conversion rates. If your ROAS isn't getting better even after fixing mistakes, it could be because you've only worked on compliance issues and haven't added any strategic improvements like custom labels. Grouping products by margin or stage of their lifecycle makes sure that your ad money goes to the things that really make you money.
It's important to understand that these numbers are about the quality of the feed, not just how the campaign was set up. You can tell that your feed is helping your business grow instead of slowing it down when impression share goes up, CTR beats category benchmarks, conversion rates stay the same, and ROAS goes up.
Product feeds are the glue that holds ecommerce together, helping people find things on Amazon, TikTok Shop, Meta, and other sites. An optimized feed is what makes the difference between being seen by the right customer and not being seen at all. Titles, pictures, tags, and groups are all important. But the plan behind them is also important. To keep your campaigns competitive, you need to treat your feed like live performance data.
We built our product feed management platform at Marpipe on that idea. We help marketers turn static feeds into engines for growth by linking product data directly to our other platform features, such as creative design and optimization. Want to know more? To get started, book a demo.
