Keep your business data updated

Important

• Starting 30 June 2022, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit ad customisers for expanded text ads as the creation of new expanded text ads will no longer be supported.
• You’ll also no longer be able to upload or edit the business data for expanded text ads.
• Existing ad customisers for expanded text ads will continue to serve until 31 May 2024.
• We strongly encourage you to transition to responsive search ads.
• Learn more about Making it easier to show the right message on search.

After you’ve set up your business data feeds, you need to keep your business data feed fresh and updated regularly. You can automatically schedule updates to refresh your business data feed based on how often your data changes. To keep your business data feed fresh, you may find yourself wanting to add another piece of data (Add an item to your feed), update information about your data (Edit items within your feed) or augment the existing data in your feed with a new column of information (Add an attribute).

Bear in mind

• Feeds should not be scheduled to end at midnight.
• Scheduled uploads will only work at 15 minute increments (0, 15, 30, 45).

Before you begin

Pay close attention to the required feed attributes and make sure that your data complies with Google’s advertising policies and any relevant laws in your targeted locations.

This is an instructional article about updating your business data feed. Before you start, you may want to read About feeds and business data.

Add or edit items in your data

Add or edit items to your data sources one at a time in Google Ads, or upload a spreadsheet with changes.

Instructions

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the 'Appearance' icon, and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the Search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page that you’re searching for.

Add items within Google Ads

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Budgets and bidding drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Business data.
4. Under 'Name', click the data source that you’d like to add items to.
5. Click the plus button.
6. Fill in details for your new item.
7. Click Save.

Edit items within Google Ads

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Budgets and bidding drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Business data.
4. Under 'Name', click the data source that you’d like to edit.
5. Hover over to the value that you’d like to edit, and click the pencil icon .
6. Click Save.

Add attributes within Google Ads

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Budgets and bidding drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Business data.
4. Under 'Name', click the feed or data set to which you'd like to add an attribute.
5. Click Settings and choose 'Attributes'.
6. Choose a type, enter a name, and click Add.
7. Click Save.

Note: If you are looking to add ad customiser attributes for responsive search ads, select 'Ad customiser attributes' instead. Learn more about creating ad customisers for responsive search ads

Check your new attribute within Google Ads

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Budgets and bidding drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Business data.
4. Under 'Name', click the feed or data to which you added your new attribute.
5. Click Columns.
6. Under 'Modify columns', click Attributes.

Note: Attributes that you add to your dynamic display ad feeds should follow these specs; custom attributes aren't available.

Edit your data with a spreadsheet

Bulk-editing with a spreadsheet lets you update multiple rows of your data set or feed at the same time. When you do this, you can choose to replace all the rows, or to update some of the rows. If you choose the update option, you'll need to include an 'Action' column and an ID column that's specific to each feature.

You can upload the changes in a variety of file formats, including Google Sheets, .xlsx, .xls, .csv and .tsv. Bear in mind that the size limit for your .csv and .tsv files is 500 MB and 50 MB for .xlsx and .xls.

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the 'Appearance' icon, and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the Search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page that you’re searching for.

Replace all values with a spreadsheet

1. Create a spreadsheet to update your data set or feed. You can import directly from Google Sheets or upload an .xls, .xlsx, .csv or .tsv file.
2. Include the same columns that you have in your existing data set or feed. Make sure that you match the column names exactly.
3. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
4. Click the Budgets and bidding drop-down in the section menu.
5. Click Business data.
6. Under 'Name', click the data source that you’d like to replace.
7. Click the three-dot menu then choose Upload.
8. Click Browse for file, then click Open.
9. Click Preview, or if you’re ready, click Apply.

Update particular rows with a spreadsheet

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the 'Appearance' icon, and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the Search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page that you’re searching for.

1. Create a spreadsheet to update your data set or feed. You can import directly from Google Sheets or upload an .xls, .xlsx, .csv or .tsv file.
2. Include an Action column. The actions that you can define are Set, Add and Remove.
3. Include an ID column.
   • For ad customisers, include the Item ID column that Google Ads creates, or the Custom ID column that you've added.
   • For dynamic display ads, include the ID column for your vertical. See specs
4. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
5. Click the Budgets and bidding drop-down in the section menu.
6. Click Business data.
7. Under 'Name', click the feed or data set which you'd like to bulk-edit.
8. Click the three-dot menu then choose Upload.
9. Choose Update. If your file includes items that are identical to existing ones, Google Ads preserves any performance stats for those items.
10. Click Choose file, then click Open.
11. Click Preview, or if you’re ready, click Apply.

Note: If you'd like to add a new column to your feed or data set, you'll need to add the attribute within the Google Ads interface before uploading data to that column in a spreadsheet. Bulk-editing only applies to existing columns.

Schedule automatic updates

You can set up Google Ads to automatically update your ad customiser and dynamic display ad business data daily, weekly, or on the first day of the month. Here’s how to schedule automatic updates:

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon .
2. Click the Budgets and bidding drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Business data.
4. Under 'Name', click the feed or data set to which you'd like to update automatically.
5. From the left-hand menu, click Schedules.
6. Select your data’s format from the 'Source' menu.
7. Link your file by completing the required fields:
   1. Google Drive: Click Choose file, then select the file containing your business data. Once your file is linked, share it with the email address that's displayed on screen, then click Save. Learn how to share a file
   2. HTTP: Add your file’s URL to the 'URL' field, then click Save.
   3. HTTPS: Add your file’s URL and the username and password required to access your file, then click Save.
   4. FTP / SFTP: Add your file’s URL and the username and password required to access your file, then click Save.
      1. Example of SFTP URL: sftp://mserver.com/path/to/my/file.csv
      2. Example of FTP URL: ftp://mserver.com/path/to/my/file.csv
8. Select how often you’d like Google Ads to update your data from the 'Frequency' menu.
9. Click Save.

Related links

• About business data and data feeds
• Set up business data feeds
• Troubleshoot your business data feeds