How to Optimize Your

Google Product Feed in Time

for Black Friday

R E T A I L A D V E R T I S E R C O U R S E

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Session Recording Will Be Sent Next Week

Q&A Following the Presentation

Submit Questions In the Chat Box to the Right

T O D AY ’ S S P E A K E R

Jason Bell

Senior Retail Search Manager

OVERVIEW

• Founded in 2007

• Recognized as an Official Google Shopping Partner

• 300+ Active Retail Clients

• Top 50 fastest growing company in San Diego 3 years

CLIENTS

About CPC Strategy

SOLUTIONS

• Retail-focused Paid Search (PPC)

• Google Shopping Management

• Shopping Channel Management

• Amazon Sales Acceleration

Jason Bell Senior Retail Search Manager

Experience managing accounts for Riddell, Deluxe, ABT, & Sears

Over 6 years of SEM experience

Flag football superstar

Poll For The Audience…

Are you making optimizations to your product feed?

A. Yes, consistently making optimizations

B. Yes, but only periodically

C. Not as much as I would like to

D. Not making any optimizations

Course Overview

• Basic Product Data Quality – “The Easy Stuff”

• Improving your product titles for search intent

• How to manipulate custom labels

• Implementing keyword insertions

• Improving & leveraging categorization

• Category specific enhancements

• Q&A

G o o g l e M e r c h a n t C e n t e r D i a g n o s t i c s Ta b

Before We Get Started

If you already have a Google Merchant Center account and Shopping Campaign rolling, I suggest we start here.

Diagnostics Tab

Found within ‘Diagnostics’ on the left side navigation

bar within your Google Merchant Center

• Shows most of your current warnings and

disapproved product issues

Feed Report

Found within ‘Feeds’ button on the left side nav bar

• Shows issues the system picks up during import

of the product feed

B a s i c P r o d u c t D a t a Q u a l i t y – “ T h e E a s y S t u f f ”

Fully Populated Columns

Typically focus on required columns first, then move onto optional columns.

• A list of required columns can be found here

Pro Tip:

• Ctrl + Down in desired columns

• Filter for Blanks (recommended)

B a s i c P r o d u c t D a t a Q u a l i t y – “ T h e E a s y S t u f f ”

Links (Product Page & URLs)

Do They Work?

Test 5+ links. I recommend testing at least a couple of higher AOV items & best sellers with and

without tracking attached.

• Tracking could include Google Analytics UTM tracking or other variations such as Omniture SIDs

• Ensure your expected unit drivers & sale items are correct and working. These are your bread

& butter during Black Friday & Cyber Monday sales.

Do You Have Variations Of Your Products? If So, Does The Landing Page Show

The Corresponding Variation When Loaded?

How Are Your Landing Pages Set Up?

1. Single parent page with a drop down to select size/color or other variable options

• Is the variation option pre-selected when URL is loaded?

2. Multiple pages per variation product

• In this case, ensure the correct variations are showing up

f you have variations but are only sending a parent product in the feed, potentially building the

variations out and sending them will help visibility of your business during the holiday shopping

season.

Replace with

product variation

image

B a s i c P r o d u c t D a t a Q u a l i t y – “ T h e E a s y S t u f f ”

Images

Check Sizes

Google recommends 800 x 800, what size do we receive?

• Is it possible to change the dimensions within the URL itself?

• Do you have access to multiple image columns?

• You are eligible to send additional image URLs to Google within the feed

• Recommended to send the highest quality image as the main image

Watermarks / Promotional Text

These can be hard to spot if they are on select products out of a multi-thousand

product feed. --- Spot check for these and be on the look out for Google Warnings (or

history of them)

*Note: Any text within an image could be flagged by Google as “Promotional Text” be

careful.

B a s i c P r o d u c t D a t a Q u a l i t y – “ T h e E a s y S t u f f ”

IDs

Are They Unique?

Typically you will want to check all Unique IDs to find any duplicates. This includes SKU, MPN, UPC, ISBN, GTIN.

Ideally all values are unique even if they are variants however MPNs aren't penalized if they are duplicated.

• The item_group ID column is a great way to signal to Google that there are several variants that relate to 1 parent

item_group ID

• This helps Google tell if there are variants of a product and helps to unlock the ‘Show all’ feature below:

Feed Example - Important: A Parent SKU should be present for variants of a product

SKU MPN Item_Group_ID Title

A4-N6152-0001 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Black - Small

A4-N6152-0002 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Black - Medium

A4-N6152-0003 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Black - Large

A4-N6152-0006 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Grey - Small

A4-N6152-0007 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Grey - Medium

A4-N6152-0008 N6152 A4-N6152 A4 Adult 2 Snap Zip Up Baseball Pants - Grey - Large

B a s i c P r o d u c t D a t a Q u a l i t y – “ T h e E a s y S t u f f ”

Do The SKUs Match What You Previously Sent?

This is important because relevancy is attached to the product SKU and not the MPN or UPC

(unless those were being sent as the merchant SKUs previously)

• It is not recommended to change your product IDs once they are set and have gathered data.

Pro Tip:

• SKUs are typically unique to each merchant

• MPNs should be unique to each product, similar across all merchants (can contain variance)

• UPCs will be unique to each product bottom line (shouldn’t contain any variance)

MPNs / SKUs

Are The MPNs Modified?

Some retailers will add Brand or Vendor Part Number Prefixes while some add or remove dashes or other characters.

Do MPNs Match What Other Retailers Have?

Google searches should help us figure this out.

Do Our Skus Match Up Between The Feed And Google Analytics?

• If not, I recommend adding a new column into the feed with those values or keeping a legend handy in case you want

to match GA data.

• The benefit of the above is the allowance for historical GA data to be used at the SKU level to pull top sellers site-wide

or through specific channels.

• The “utm_term=“ tracking parameter will help us collect matching IDs after they are installed but will not help us with

historical data.

• Much of this can be ignored if using ‘Auto Tagging’ but I find it useful to pass the values just in case

B a s i c P r o d u c t D a t a Q u a l i t y – “ T h e E a s y S t u f f ”

Prices

Are Prices Accurate? Are Prices > $0?

These are easy checks that we should run after the exported are created.

• Check a few large AOV prices & some best sellers (if you have them on hand)

• Use the filtering option to search for $0 items

• The quickest way to a bounced user is to show a price higher on your landing page than

what is in your ad

Product Variations

Are We Missing / Not Sending Product Variations? Why or why not?

• During Black Friday & Cyber Monday (if your budget allows) I recommend including

variations and dominating the search impression share

• Optional to only do this on top performers or unit drivers

• We don’t have to send them, but it is helpful to have them available should we need them in

the future.

B a s i c P r o d u c t D a t a Q u a l i t y – “ T h e E a s y S t u f f ”

Shipping & Tax Data

Are we accurately providing Shipping & Tax data?

• Depending on how complicated your Shipping or Tax rules are will decide if it is more accurate to use the

Google Login or Feed

Easy Shipping & Tax Rules?

• Using the Google login will like be your best bet to quickly set up your rules as well as adjust them on the fly.

Complicated Rules or Special Considerations?

• Depending on what this entails, it may be best to send these within your feed directly

• This can be tricky and more information can be found here

B a s i c P r o d u c t D a t a Q u a l i t y – “ T h e E a s y S t u f f ”

Designated GTINs (Global Trade Item Number)

Recent Enforcement of Correct GTIN Values for Designated Brands

• Google is now requiring the correct GTIN values for several top brands across different

industries.

• For a comprehensive list which will likely be updated by Google when new brands are

added click here a quick list can be found to the right.

GTINs include the following

• UPCs (North America), EAN (Europe), JAN (Japan), ISBN (Books), & ITF-14

(multipacks)

Importance?

• Products are disapproved and eventually a suspension could be applied to your

account if not taken care of

• List will likely grow over time

Best Practice

• Gather GTINs from all Manufacturers and request them moving forward (if available)

• Easier said than done but will ensure quality data in the long term

B a s i c P r o d u c t D a t a Q u a l i t y – “ T h e E a s y S t u f f ”

Replace with Designated Brands List

Title / Description Enhancements

Brand

These should almost always be added to the front of the titles however we can also test adding them

to the end of the titles if we want to push more weight to other parts of the title. (e.g. ‘J.W. Hulme’ is

not searched often or included in most of our search terms)

Example:

Attributes: Color / Size / Gender

The addition of attributes in the title is very important as attributes are often keywords used by

customers who are looking for something specific.

Example: J.W. Hulme Leather Brief Bag J.W. Hulme Mens Brown Leather Brief Bag

Other Options:

• J.W. Hulme Mens Heritage Leather Brief Bag in Brown

• J.W. Hulme Heritage Leather Brief Bag for Men - Brown

• Mens Leather Brief Bag by J.W. Hulme – Brown

vs.

J.W. Hulme Leather Brief Bag Leather Brief Bag by J.W. Hulme vs.

I m p r o v i n g Yo u r P r o d u c t T i t l e s f o r S e a r c h I n t e n t

I m p r o v i n g Yo u r P r o d u c t T i t l e s f o r S e a r c h I n t e n t

Title / Description Enhancements

MPN / Style Number

Typically these are more useful for Electronics or Appliance merchants where customers are looking for a specific

model or style number.

• Research into Google Analytics or Search Query Reports to see if MPN or Style Numbers are being used to search

for products. Feed:

Search Query Report:

Google Results:

Product Type

Does the title actually say what the product is?

Example: “J.W. Hulme Mens Heritage Leather Brief In Brown” works but it doesn’t have the key

word “bag” or “case”

Title / Description Enhancements

Excessive Capitalization

This is something that can easily slip passed even the most cunning eyes.

Pro Tip: Excessive Capitalization

• SB can use the =PROPER() function to change the 1st letter in each word of a cell to uppercase, leaving the rest lower case.

• Be careful with this function if you are dealing with MPNs in the titles which look much better with full capitalization.

HTLM & Other Encoding Artifacts

This is also very common and can easily be missed. I typically find these during my search for larger issues. The

encoding artifacts are common when apostrophes, commas, ampersands, etc. are used in the text but not decoded

properly.

Pro Tip:

• Usually a quick FIND (CTRL + F) within Excel for the following characters will help me spot theses earlier. < , Â , € , { , %

Does The Title Make Sense?

Does it read well? Does it look out of the ordinary? Make sure its not just keyword soup.

I m p r o v i n g Yo u r P r o d u c t T i t l e s f o r S e a r c h I n t e n t

H o w t o M a n i p u l a t e C u s t o m L a b e l s

Custom Labels

Fill Your Labels

Even if you don’t plan to actually build out the campaign and pull these levers at launch, it is always a good idea to

collect data along as many points as possible. What data would be useful for you to collect?

Pro Tip:

• Product attributes work great to fill up empty custom label columns. Collecting data on “color”,

“material”, “style”, “size”, etc may not have any immediate benefits but it does allow you to run some interesting reports.

I m p l e m e n t i n g K e y w o r d I n s e r t i o n s

Questions to Explore

• Do PLAs show up for these keywords when running a manual search?

• Does at least one of your products show up when running this search?

• How much does your Shopping campaigns currently spend on these keywords?

• Do your product titles or descriptions include this keyword?

Leveraging Current PPC Campaigns/Keywords

Great place to start when trying to ensure you dominate the PLAs within your top performing SERPs

• Shopping typically has a higher conversion rate, having your text ads and PLA ads visible on the same

search result can help strengthen the credibility to potential customers.

Finding Search Term Reports

You can run this on all your campaigns as well if you want to know your account wide top performing search queries

*Note: These are typically not the keywords you are bidding on (PPC). Instead this shows you metrics on

the auctions you are winning based upon what the user is actually typing in the search bar.

I m p l e m e n t i n g K e y w o r d I n s e r t i o n s

Finding Your Site Search Data

This is where you pull the data through Google Analytics

I m p r o v i n g & L e v e r a g i n g C a t e g o r i z a t i o n

Product Types / GPCs

Don’t Assume Product Types Provided Are The End All Be All

Its always good to take a second look at provided product types. After all we have the ability to use these within

Google Shopping as a lever.

• These can be more accurate and granular than the GPCs which can make them useful for grouping products aside

from the GPCs or Custom Labels.

ProTip:

• Product Type is the retailers categorization

• GPCs / Google Product Categories are

the closes Google equivalent

I m p r o v i n g & L e v e r a g i n g C a t e g o r i z a t i o n

Does The Retailer Have Multiple Delimited Categories?

These could be separate by commas, dashes, backslashes, or carrots (ideal) for example.

ProTip:

• If your retailer separates their Product Types using > then we can drill down into each individually within

Google Shopping exactly like we can with the GPCs.

• We can always request a Find & Replace function from SB to accomplish this if they are delimited by a

different character (ex: commas)

Do Product Types Match On-Site Categorization?

If not, request the retailer to improve their categorization within the feed.

C a t e g o r y S p e c i f i c E n h a n c e m e n t s

Important Considerations

Important Features Or Data Points Of The Products You Sell

• These should be highlighted within the titles & descriptions

• Different depending on product types – e.g. Electronics vs Apparel

Audience & Typical Searches Done By Your Customers

• Are MPNs or Part Numbers used often? e.g. Electronics & Appliances

• Are there several sizes to distinguish? e.g. Apparel & Hardware

Your Current Data Quality

• Are you receiving this data from the manufacturers?

• Are you supplying this data to Google / on your site / within your feed?

What Your Data Points Tells You

• Running the reports previously outlined, where are your highest conversion rates or orders coming from?

Electronics & Appliances

Title / Description Additions or Manipulations

MPNs

• Targets users who know the specific model #

Specifications

• Size, Features, Additions, Color, etc..

Brand Name (typically to the front)

• Let your data decide if brand should be closer to the front (recommended)

Product Type / Google Product Categories

• Granularity helps create more levers within your product groups

• Ability to target and bid on specific products types easily

Custom Labels

• Product Types

• Price Ranges

• ROI Margins

• Product Group IDs (variations)

C a t e g o r y S p e c i f i c E n h a n c e m e n t s

C a t e g o r y S p e c i f i c E n h a n c e m e n t s

Apparel

Title / Description Additions or Manipulations

• Brand Name (typically to the front)

• Product Descriptors

• Gender, Size, Color, Material, etc..

• Including ‘Style Names’

• Product Types (e.g. Boots or Leather Briefcase)

Product Type / Google Product Categories

• Granularity helps create more levers within your product groups

• Product Type e.g. Apparel > Womens > Boots vs Apparel

Custom Labels

• Price Floor

• ‘Style Names’

• Product Types e.g. ‘boots’ or ‘briefcases’

• Colors

• Size

• Material

C a t e g o r y S p e c i f i c E n h a n c e m e n t s

Google Merchant Promotions

Take Advantage Of Black Friday / Cyber Monday / Holiday Promotions

• Improve Visibility, CTR, and Conversion Rates

• Created Within the Google Merchant Center

• If the ‘Promotions’ tab is unavailable, please sign-up here

• Use the form below to create your promotions or use a separate promotions feed

• Full guide can be found here

Questions for Jason? Submit your questions in the chat box on the right

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