Google Shopping Optimization: Query Sculpting, Feed Management & Advanced Strategies
Ready to maximize your returns on Google Shopping? You’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll dive deep into everything you need to know about optimizing Google Shopping campaigns. From foundational strategies like Google Shopping feed management to advanced techniques like query sculpting, this post provides actionable steps for beginners and seasoned marketers alike.
Prefer video? Check out our video The RIGHT Way to Optimize Google Shopping Campaigns on YouTube now:
Still with us? Good. Let’s jump in.
The Foundation of Success: Your Product Feed
Think of your Google Shopping product feed as the DNA of your Google Shopping campaigns. Every ad Google shows is pulled directly from this feed, meaning its quality determines your campaign’s effectiveness. Google Shopping feed optimization starts with optimizing your product feeds.
Key Product Feed Components:
Product Titles:
Product titles should include keywords customers are likely to use. For example, instead of “Running Shoe,” opt for compelling product titles like, “Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 39 Men’s Running Shoe.”
Structure matters. Consider using this format for your product titles (if it makes sense to do so): [Brand] [Product Name] [Category] [Key Attributes].
Product Images:
Optimize product images. Use high-quality product images with clean backgrounds. For industries like fashion or furniture, consider lifestyle images in addition to standard product shots.
Follow Google’s image guidelines to avoid disapprovals and ensure your product images are fully compliant.
Descriptions:
Write concise, engaging descriptions that highlight key benefits and features based on product data. Use natural language that aligns with your potential customers’ searches.
Pricing:
Competitive pricing can make or break your campaign. Regularly benchmark your prices against competitors using tools like Price2Spy or the Merchant Center price competitiveness report.
Offer discounts or promotions where possible to help your Shopping campaigns stand out.
Product Categories:
Assign accurate Google Product Categories to each item. Misclassification can hurt visibility and disqualify your products from showing for relevant queries. Ensure any product data you provide to Google is accurate.
Advanced Product Feed Optimization Tips:
Use custom labels to group products by seasonality, profit margin, or stock levels. For example, label high-margin products as “priority” for focused bidding.
Implement structured product data on your website to ensure consistent information across your feed and site.
Monitor and fix feed errors promptly using Google Merchant Center diagnostics.
Strong product feeds not only improve your campaign’s relevance but also ensures that your ads are shown to the right audience at the right time.
Structuring Your Google Shopping Campaigns for Success
Your Google Shopping campaign structure serves as the framework for your Google Shopping strategy. A well-structured campaign ensures your budget is allocated effectively, prioritizing high-performing products and allowing for granular optimizations.
Of course, when it comes to your Google Shopping campaign structure, there are many factors to consider, such as:
How many SKUs you have
The number of brands you sell
What your margins are on each product
The optimal Google Shopping campaign structure for your business may look different depending on the above factors.
Why Campaign Structure Matters
Unlike Search ads, Shopping campaigns don’t rely on manual keyword targeting. Instead, Google uses your product feed and campaign settings to determine when and where your ads appear. This makes your structure critical for directing traffic and controlling costs.
Proven Campaign Structures:
Best Sellers First:
Isolate your best-performing products in a separate campaign to give them the budget and attention they deserve.
Use higher bids to maximize visibility and conversion opportunities in Google Ads.
Segment by Brand or Category:
If you have a diverse catalog, separate Google Shopping campaigns by brand or product category to better align bids and budgets with product performance.
Example: TVs from Samsung, LG, and Sony can each have their own Shopping campaign.
Seasonal and Promotional Products:
Create dedicated Google Shopping campaigns for seasonal items or products on sale. This allows you to bid aggressively on high-demand items (without affecting the rest of your product catalog).
Catch-All Campaigns:
For low-priority or low-performing products, group them into a general Shopping campaign with lower bids. This ensures they still receive some visibility without consuming too much budget.
Advanced Segmentation Ideas:
By Price Point: Separate products by price range to tailor bids based on purchase intent.
By Margins: Dedicate higher budgets to high-margin products while minimizing spend on low-margin items.
By Lifecycle: Create Google Shopping campaigns for new products, which may need additional visibility, and separate campaigns for clearance items.
Campaign Structure by Account Size:
Small Accounts (<$10,000 Monthly Spend):
Focus on simplicity. Prioritize best-sellers and consolidate the rest into a single catch-all Shopping campaign.
Medium Accounts ($10,000–$50,000 Monthly Spend):
Introduce segmentation by category or brand to improve control and performance.
Large Accounts (>$50,000 Monthly Spend):
Leverage granular segmentation for top categories, while consolidating lesser-performing products into broader campaigns.
Your Shopping campaign structure should align with your business goals, product performance, and available budget. A well-structured campaign allows for precise optimizations, better budget allocation, and higher returns.
Query Sculpting: Master the Art of Traffic Control
Invented my Martin Roettgerding, query sculpting is an advanced Google Ads optimization technique that allows you to funnel search traffic based on user intent. It’s particularly valuable for Shopping campaigns, where manual keyword targeting isn’t possible.
What is Query Sculpting?
Query sculpting is a structure that allows you to bid higher on higher intent terms. It involves creating multiple Google Shopping campaigns with distinct priority levels and negative keyword lists to control how search terms are routed. This ensures that high-intent searches receive the most aggressive bids while generic searches are bid on conservatively.
How to Implement Query Sculpting
Set Up Three Campaigns:
Product Campaign: Captures high-intent searches (e.g., “Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 39 Men’s Size 10,” “resmed p10”).
Brand Campaign: Captures mid-intent searches (e.g., “Nike running shoes,” “resmed cpap mask”).
Generic Campaign: Captures broad searches (e.g., “running shoes,” “cpap supplies”).
Assign Campaign Priorities:
High Priority: Generic Campaign
Medium Priority: Brand Campaign
Low Priority: Product Campaign
Add Negative Keywords:
Exclude product-specific terms from Generic and Brand Campaigns.
Exclude brand terms from Generic Campaigns.
Set Bids:
Product Campaign: These are typically high-intent searches, so set your bid very high
Brand Campaign: Set your bid high
Generic Campaign: These are lower intent searches, so set your bid low
Budget:
The budget is shared across all three Google Ads campaigns. If you don’t have a shared budget, one of these campaigns may get capped out, and keywords will start funneling into different campaigns, so we recommend sharing the budget across your three Shopping campaigns.
Why it Works
Query sculpting allows you to bid more aggressively on high-intent searches, which are more likely to convert, while minimizing spend on generic terms that may not lead to immediate sales.
Pro Tips:
Use shared budgets to prevent one campaign from exhausting its budget and disrupting the query sculpting Google shopping structure.
Regularly review search term reports in Google Ads to refine your negative keyword lists.
Bidding Strategies
Your bidding strategy determines how effectively your Shopping ad competes in the auction. Whether you’re new to Google Shopping ads campaigns or an experienced advertiser, a well-thought-out approach to bidding is essential.
As a general rule of thumb: Budgets should be allocated in a manner where best-sellers are not being limited.
Recommended Strategies:
Manual CPC:
Ideal for new campaigns where you need control over costs and bid adjustments.
Enhanced CPC (eCPC):
Automatically adjusts bids for clicks that are more likely to convert.
Target ROAS (tROAS):
Use this smart bidding strategy once you’ve accumulated 30–50 conversions. Set initial targets based on historical data, then gradually increase them.
Exclude Underperforming Products
Not every product in your catalog deserves ad spend. Regularly review performance and exclude items that fail to deliver results. But don’t be hasty — some products may need additional testing or feed optimization before being excluded from Google Shopping ads.
Make sure you have a lot of data on hand before excluding poor performers from your Google Shopping campaigns. You want to be 100% confident a product is a poor performer before excluding it.
Questions to Ask Before Excluding:
Are there any errors on the Google Shopping product feed?
Is the product priced competitively?
Is the title optimized for search?
Is there a seasonal dip affecting performance?
If a product consistently underperforms despite optimizations, move it to a separate “testing” campaign with lower bids. This gives it one last chance to succeed without draining your main Google shopping budget.
Key Performance Metrics to Watch
When reviewing performance of your Shopping campaigns and products, you’ll want to pay attention to the usual metrics, like:
Clicks
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Average CPC
Conversion Rate
Conversion Value
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
However, Google Shopping campaigns offer unique insights that can guide your Google Shopping feed optimization strategy. Pay attention to:
Search Impression Share:
This is the percentage of total impressions your ad receives compared to eligibility.
A low impression share indicates untapped opportunities. The lower the search impression share, the more concerned we get.
As a rough guide for your Shopping campaigns, a search impression share above 50% is good.
Click Share:
This is the share of clicks your ad captures relative to the estimated number of clicks that you could have received.
Aim for steady growth in click share over time.
Benchmark CPC (Cost per Click):
Use this metric to compare your average CPC with competitors. Adjust bids if your CPC is significantly higher or lower than the benchmark.
Benchmark CTR (Click-Through Rate):
Use this metric to determine what the benchmark click-through rate is, based on the data Google has available.
This gives you a good idea as to how competitive your click-through rate is. If it’s too low, this is a good indicator that you need to optimize your Google Shopping.
Consider these reports alongside key Google Merchant Center reports. Google Merchant Center is where your product feed lives, so pay close attention to:
Shopping Experience Scorecard
Price Competitiveness
Competitive Visibility
Promotions
You can watch a comprehensive overview of what these reports are (and where you can find them inside of Merchant Center) here:
By regularly monitoring these metrics, you can make data-driven decisions to improve performance in your Google Ads account.
Performance Max Campaigns and Google Shopping Ads?
Performance Max campaigns leverage Google’s AI to deliver ads across Search, Display, YouTube, and other networks. They’re particularly effective for showcasing your best-selling products to your target audience.
At Grow My Ads, we’ve found that 70-80% of the time, we’re having more success with PMax campaigns than we are with Google Shopping. That said, the strongest ad strategies tend to use both.
Hybrid Strategy:
Best Sellers: Test these in Performance Max campaigns for maximum reach.
Other Products: Keep these in standard Shopping campaigns for greater control.
Remember, results vary by account. Start small and scale based on performance.
Final Thoughts
Optimizing Google Shopping campaigns is an ongoing process that requires attention to detail and a willingness to adapt. By focusing on Google Shopping feed optimization, campaign structure, and advanced techniques like query sculpting, you can achieve a higher ROAS (return on ad spend) and greater profitability.
Key Takeaways:
Optimize your product feed (including product titles) — your product feed is the foundation of any success with Google Shopping.
Structure your campaigns to prioritize best sellers and make sure they align with your goals.
Use query sculpting to control traffic and maximize high-intent, relevant searches to reach potential customers more effectively.
Monitor performance metrics and refine strategies regularly.
Test Performance Max campaigns to stay ahead of the competition.
Optimize your Google Shopping with these strategies, and get ready to dominate your market. Let’s make this year your most successful yet!
Need help improving your Google Ads performance? We can help. Learn more about how we work here.
Google Shopping Feed Optimizations: How to Optimize Your Product Feeds