AdWords New Google Shopping Product Status Column
Google Shopping Product Status Column
Approved and ready to serve products are essential for Google Shopping performance. Thanks to the introduction of the Google Shopping product status column – now retailers can monitor and ensure all of their products are live in their Shopping campaigns.
According to Google, 12% of top-clicked products for all advertisers in 2016 are currently not being advertised because they are disapproved or out of stock.
Now, retailers can make sure products in their inventory are ready to go live and leverage effective max CPC reporting. Retailers can also use the latest feature to easily spot the status of their best performing products.
“By Adwords giving further insight into what is happening with the feed within Google Merchant Center, more efficiency is added to the day-to-day lives of account managers,” La Broi Walton, Retail Search Manager at CPC Strategy said.
“Account managers can now check on the status of their shopping feeds without having to log into the GMC, or click on the bubbles associated with each product group within their shopping campaigns.”
“Among other uses, this definitely helps in identifying situations around campaign and product group performance due to feed issues/changes.”
As seen in the examples below, product status will help identify items that have stopped attracting traffic and conversions because they are disapproved, excluded or out of stock:
For example, if you sell watches and want to know why there’s been a 40% decrease in total conversions this month from your top performers. You can use the product status column to see if this drop was due to an inventory issue.
Pro-Tip: You would select “product status” from the columns drop-down, then sort the table by descending conversions.
Adjust bidding immediately for top watches with the effective max CPC column; the effective max CPC column shows the bid you set on products within your product groups. Clicking on it takes you directly to the product group that covers this watch.
Google is also bringing new inventory status insights in the Product groups tab.
This allows retailers to see which products need to be updated in their product data and Shopping campaigns so their campaign reaches its full potential.
Retailers can use these new columns for a snapshot of inventory status including:
- Products submitted: Total products in your linked Merchant Center account
- Products approved: Total of submitted products approved by Google
- Products active: Approved products with a bid
- Products ready to serve: Active products that are in stock
- % approved: Percentage of approved from total submitted products
- % active: Percentage of approved products with a bid
- % ready to serve: Percentage of your total products eligible for auction
- Google Shopping new product status column for product groups
- New product status columns for product groups
Pro-Tip: For example, a retailer notices a conversion drop specifically in their “white gold watches” product group. If “% approved” is showing only 60% for “white gold watches,” the loss in conversions could be the result of disapproved products.
Also, Shopping attributes like brand or product type are now available in the AdWords Report Editor.
After a retailer reviews the status of their products, they can analyze their performance by building custom tables and charts to identify trends, compare sales across brands or devices, and optimize for their goals.
Google Shopping Custom Column
Retailers can also set up a custom column within the AdWords interface based on a formula. The columns you can use to create the formula are limited to the pre-made Google columns (ex: you can’t use custom labels).
Below is an example of how a retailer would create a Google Shopping Custom Columns:
Step 1:
Step 2:
Step 3:
Although custom columns have been around for a while, these are definitely very useful for retailers who care about metrics other than what is readily available in AdWords.
For more on Google Shopping product status & custom columns, email [email protected].
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