Your Google Shopping campaigns are only as good as your product feed. You can have the right budget, the right bidding strategy, and the right campaign structure, but if your feed is sending Google weak product data, you’re invisible for the searches that matter.
The single biggest lever in Shopping feed optimisation is product titles. Not images. Not pricing. Not descriptions. Titles. They determine which search queries trigger your products, how prominently your listings appear, and whether the click-through rate justifies the cost per click.
I’ve managed Google Shopping and feed optimisation for eCommerce brands across dozens of verticals for over 15 years. The title is where most accounts are leaving money on the table.
How Google Matches Products to Searches
Google Shopping doesn’t use keywords the way Search campaigns do. There are no keyword match types, no keyword bids, no keyword-level negative lists (though you can add negatives at the campaign level). Instead, Google reads your product feed (primarily the title) and decides which search queries your product is relevant for.
If your product title says “Blue Widget,” Google will show it for “blue widget” and maybe “widget blue” and “buy blue widget.” But it won’t show it for “navy gadget for home office” even if that’s exactly what you sell, because none of those words appear in your title.
This is why feed optimisation is so important for Shopping campaigns. You’re not bidding on keywords. You’re giving Google the raw material to match your products to queries. Better raw material means better matches, which means better traffic, which means better ROAS.
What a Good Product Title Looks Like
The formula I use with clients follows a consistent structure: Brand + Product Type + Key Attributes (material, colour, size) + Qualifying Details.
Here’s a real-world example. Suppose you sell picture frames.
Weak title: “Oak Frame 8×10”
Strong title: “Solid Oak Photo Frame 8×10 Inch — Wall Mounted, Glass Front”
The strong title captures more search queries. Someone searching “oak photo frame” sees it. Someone searching “wall mounted picture frame” sees it. Someone searching “8×10 glass frame” sees it. The weak title only shows up for a fraction of those searches.
This isn’t theory. When we took over a framing eCommerce brand’s account and rebuilt their feed alongside their campaign structure, ROAS improved from approximately 4x to 6.39x. Feed restructuring was a significant part of that result.
The Five Feed Attributes That Drive Shopping Performance
Titles are the priority, but they don’t work in isolation. These five attributes form the core of a high-performing Shopping feed:
Product title. Front-load the most important descriptors. Google gives more weight to words that appear earlier in the title. If “running shoes” matters more than the brand name for your audience, lead with “running shoes” not “Nike.” Test both structures and measure which generates more impression share on high-intent queries.
Product type. This is your custom categorisation taxonomy, separate from Google’s product category. Use it. Be specific. “Home > Living Room > Coffee Tables > Glass Coffee Tables” gives Google far more signal than “Furniture > Tables.” The more granular your product type, the better Google can match your product to niche queries.
Product description. Google does use this for matching, though it carries less weight than the title. Include natural keyword variations here. If your title says “coffee table,” your description should mention “living room table,” “centre table,” and other terms people actually search.
Custom labels. These don’t affect matching directly, but they’re critical for campaign structure. Label products by margin tier, seasonality, bestseller status, or price bracket. Then use those labels to segment your Shopping campaigns and allocate budget where the return is highest. A motorcycle accessories brand we manage used custom labels to separate high-margin accessories from low-margin consumables, allowing us to bid more aggressively on the products that actually drove profit.
Image quality. Shopping is visual. Your main image should show the product on a clean white background, well-lit, with no text overlays or watermarks. Google will suppress listings with poor image quality, and even if they do show, a bad image tanks your click-through rate. I’ve seen CTR double simply from replacing lifestyle shots with clean product photography in the main image slot.
Common Feed Mistakes I See in Audits
Using manufacturer titles as-is. Your supplier’s product title is written for a wholesale catalogue, not for a Google search query. “SKU-7842 BLK SM” tells Google nothing useful. Rewrite every title for search intent.
Ignoring mobile formatting. Google truncates Shopping titles on mobile at roughly 70 characters. If the important information is at the end of your title, mobile users never see it. Front-load the words that matter.
Not updating feeds regularly. If your feed has out-of-stock products, wrong prices, or stale titles, Google will penalise you. Your feed should sync at least daily. Ideally, multiple times per day if your inventory moves fast.
Skipping supplemental feeds. Your primary feed comes from your eCommerce platform. A supplemental feed lets you override and enrich that data without touching your website. Use supplemental feeds to test title variations, add custom labels, and fix attribute gaps without waiting for a developer.
One-size-fits-all titles across all channels. What works for Google Shopping doesn’t necessarily work for Meta or Bing. If you’re running multi-channel campaigns, consider feed optimisation tools that let you customise titles per channel.
How to Measure Whether Your Feed Changes Are Working
Don’t change everything at once. Pick your top 20 products by revenue and optimise their titles first. Then measure the impact over 2-4 weeks.
What to track: impressions (are you showing up for more queries?), click-through rate (are the right people clicking?), and conversion rate (are those clicks buying?). If you want context for what “good” looks like, check our eCommerce PPC benchmarks. If impressions increase but CTR drops, your titles might be too broad. If CTR increases but conversions stay flat, the issue is probably your landing page or pricing, not your feed.
Run a search terms report in Google Ads filtered to your Shopping campaign. Compare the queries triggering your products before and after the title changes. You should see a shift toward more specific, higher-intent queries. That shift is where the ROAS improvement comes from.
Feed Optimisation Is Ongoing, Not a One-Off
Treat your feed like a living document. Search behaviour changes. Competitors adjust their feeds. Google updates its matching algorithms. A title that worked brilliantly six months ago might be underperforming today because the competitive landscape shifted.
We review client feeds monthly as part of our ongoing Google Ads management process. It’s not the most glamorous work, but it’s consistently one of the highest-impact activities we do. Marginal gains in feed quality compound over time, and the difference between a mediocre feed and an excellent one can be the difference between a 3x ROAS and a 6x ROAS.
If you’re running Shopping campaigns and haven’t touched your feed in months, that’s the place to start. And if you’d like us to take a look, our Free Ads Analysis includes a full feed quality assessment.