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Your Ultimate Google Shopping Exam Guide

Written by Carrie AlbrightSenior Account Manager

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Your Ultimate Google Shopping Exam Checklist

The Google Shopping Exam is here.Released this year, the Google Shopping Exam covers basic and advanced concepts, including creating a Merchant Center account, product data feeds, and creating and managing Shopping campaigns. This whitepaper will cover all the subject matter necessary to help you study and pass the exam.

GETTinG CErTifiEdTo be certified you must successfully complete the Fundamentals & the Shopping Exam. This tactic is great for small ecommerce accounts where you may spend 90% of your time in Shopping campaigns and 10% in Branded campaigns here and there. If this is you, breathe a sigh of relief that you don’t need to stress over the in’s and out’s of the Display Exam any longer.

Reviewing the facts:

1. Youhave90minutestoanswer63questions.2. No“preview”option–justpickyourpoisonand continuethetest.Youwillnotbeabletoreturn toanypreviousquestion.3. Multiplechoiceanswers,withtheoccasional multipleanswer.4. The passing score is 80%.5. Ifyoudonotpass,youmayretakethetestin7days.6. Yourpassingscoreisgoodfor12months.

ArE You rEAdY To TAkE ThE ExAm?Though the exam is available, you may be wondering whether or not you are ready to take it.

For Those New to Shopping Campaigns: If you’ve never used Google Shopping Campaigns before, I’d suggest you give yourself 6 months or so before stepping up to the certification plate. You should immediately, however, begin using the study guides and other helpful resources to not only prepare for the test, but also to learn how to improve your Shopping performance.

Our recommendation:As active participants in the world of Google PPC, we would highly advise you to take and pass all of the avail-able exams. It’s great for improving your own management capabilities.

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Your Ultimate Google Shopping Exam Checklist

For Those with Intermediate Experience Levels: After reading through this whitepaper, you should have a strong idea about your preparedness. There are details covered in the exam that you may want to look into a bit more before jumping into this test, but overall, I’d encourage you to go for it. Follow recommended steps for preparing for any exam, but give yourself a deadline to take it and do your best.

For the “Experts”: You’ve been waiting for this day. You’re confident you’ve got more than enough experience setting up, running, and optimizing Shopping Campaigns and you’re ready. You’re probably reading this whitepaper so you don’t get blindsided halfway through the 90-minute exam. Don’t worry; we’ll cover all the important stuff!

ThE mATEriAlBecause it’s only 63 questions and 90 minutes, you might think you’ll just take the exam and look up every answer one-by-one in the handy Google Shopping Guide. This is 2015 and we know people will find shortcuts to just about everything. Let me help you in not only finishing your exam without overusing the CTL+F function, but also in actually learning a thing or two in preparation for your test.

IntroductoryStuffThere are a surprising number of questions about the overarching purpose behind Shopping campaigns.

Where do PLAs appear?

What is the purpose of a PLA?

What devices can see Product Listing Ads?

There are also some very big picture, and easily reasoned, questions sprinkled throughout the exam. Try not to overthink them.

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Your Ultimate Google Shopping Exam Checklist

Merchant CenterWhen it comes to the Merchant Center, your best bet is to double check the account creation process:

• Getting your website claimed & verified • Submitting your business’ information • Making note in your settings if you offer “adult” products (you’ll thank me for reminding

you that this exists) • And so on…

It’s also important that you understand how Google will get in touch with you if there are any issues with your feed. Does this happen within the Merchant Center interface? Should they email you as the primary contact or reach out to a technical contact directly? This is important to know anyway, but for the sake of the exam, research this detail.

ProductFeedIn my opinion, it’s this category that separates the intermediate from the experts. Although not everyone has to build his or her own data feed from scratch, the content in the Google Shopping exam certainly assumes that you’re familiar with it.

Be sure to fully understand the processing that occurs upon submitting a first time or an updated feed, including using a test feed first. There are so many columns of data to include in a feed, you’ll want to review all required areas.

Although you may sell products to any of the countries listed in the Google Shopping Help Center, you must always coordinate your feed to include products whose prices are listed in the currency and language of that country. Failure to do so can get you suspended, so beware.

Surprisingly, a large focus has to do with the unique product identifiers, mpn’s and gtin’s specifi-cally. Everyone, experts included, should be very versed in how to properly use these identifiers for the exam.

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Your Ultimate Google Shopping Exam Checklist

Product details are also important. Although many sell new products, it’s possible to sell custom made items or antique or vintage goods. When this happens, the condition may be different, but you’ll also need to use the “identifier exists” attribute. And if your product happens to fall into multiple categories, don’t list them in both; select one.

The final area to be familiar with is the proper use of custom labels. These allow for segmentation of your products once they reach the Google AdWords interface. This can range from “Holiday” labels to grouping your “Top Sellers,” both of which allow for further optimization and segmentation once in a Shopping Campaign. These questions surface time and time again, so be sure to take a moment when you complete your exam to search for “custom label” references.

Creating&SegmentingYourShoppingCampaignsWhen creating a Shopping campaign, the goal is to identify what works and how to get more of it.

When it comes to your certification, be sure to focus on the purpose of product groups. What is the benefit here? What can you accomplish at the product group level that you wouldn’t at the campaign level, such as tiered bid settings?

Similarly, be sure to familiarize yourself with campaign priority settings. This can be a powerful tool in guiding Google where to start when considering products for an auction. Because Shopping campaigns may have several overlapping products, the use of bids and priorities gives direction on where to first look for eligible products.

OptimizationsThe main strategies for Shopping campaigns at this time revolve around:

• Segmenting products into campaigns and product groups• Setting more or less aggressive bids based on performance• Changing your budgets to better accommodate the traffic you’re encountering

Save yourself some time and skim through both this and this link on the Google Support Page for feed details.

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Your Ultimate Google Shopping Exam Checklist

Most of the “strategy” questions within this exam focus on the 3 above concepts; be sure you fully understand how these approaches might be applied in varying circumstances.

When it comes to using Google-provided tools, there are three of these as well:

• AdWords Dimension tab• Bid Simulator• Benchmark performance

Much like Google Search & Display, you may not have sufficient data to utilize all 3 of these products - at least not immediately. But as you accumulate enough impressions, clicks and sales, you’ll see your performance relative to your competitors. You’ll be provided with suggestions for how to improve your bidding.

You’ll also be able to dig through the Shopping tab within your Dimensions report, and identify all the little details that will allow for improved performance, such as sales by search term and product type.

CAvEATSThe Google Shopping Exam is a little tricky. The 90 minutes went quicker for me than other tests I’ve done in the past. The wording is a little jumbled and the answers are at times misleading. The content coverage, however, was spot on in the way it incorporated PPC fundamentals with the logistics of entering the PLA game, in addition to big picture uses for PLA campaigns.

finAl ThouGhTSOverall, this new addition to the Google Certification process keeps our minds sharp and reminds us of the various ways Shopping campaigns can come together to form an important part of today’s ecommerce PPC.

hanapinmarketing.comHanapin Marketing is a paid search agency based in Bloomington, Indiana. Founded in 2004, the company

manges & optimizes clients’ paid search programs—increasing sales while simultaneously decreasing budgets.

From ad copy composition to keyword research to landing page optimization, Hanapin’s core objective is to

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