Product category insights provide information about search trends and how your ads are performing against competitors. These insights provide recommendations that can improve the performance of your product categories.
This article explains the benefits of using retail category insights, the types of insights available, and where to find them.
On this page
Benefits
Product category insights can help you:
- Identify opportunities by providing information on demand and competition so you can adapt to market changes and grow your business.
- Troubleshoot campaign and product setup issues while optimizing performance through actionable recommendations for Google Ads and Merchant Center.
Instructions
Product category insights are available both at the account level and campaign level.
Products page
- In your Google Ads account, select the Campaigns icon
.
- Optional:
- If you would like to view insights at a campaign level, select the Workspace filter at the top of the page, then select either Shopping campaigns or Performance Max campaigns.
- Select the Campaigns filter and select a campaign.
- Select Products.
- The product category insights are available in 2 areas:
- Insights will appear above the Products table. Select the left and right arrows to view each insight, or select View details to learn more. In the panel that appears, select each dropdown to view related issues and recommendations. Apply any recommendations that work for your campaign.
- Go to the Categories tab of the Products table. Here you'll be able to select a category you’re interested in and you’ll find the insights on the category details page.
How products are assigned to categories
Google automatically assigns your products to categories using a continuously evolving product taxonomy. This ensures that your products appear in the most relevant search results for potential customers. Learn more about Google Product Category.
If you think that a product has been misclassified, you can manually override the categorization by using the google_product_category attribute in your Merchant Center feed. Submitting this attribute tells Google to prioritize your specific classification over the automated categorization.
Types of insights
Each insight describes a change in the last 7 or 28 days and is paired with explanations and actionable recommendations. The top insights are featured at the top of the Products table.
By clicking on the “View details” button on each insight, you can find more details. This view displays search trends or performance data, along with any related metrics. By clicking each dropdown, you’ll get more information on related issues and view suggestions for actions you can take to improve your performance in this category.
Search interest up and performance down
This insight type shows when search interest in a product category has increased but the performance of your products in that category has decreased. Use these insights to identify the areas of improvement and solve issues while search interest is growing. You’ll identify the issues impacting your products today so that you can prioritize fixes to make the most of the increase in search interest. You’ll be able to review if campaigns advertising products from this category are limited by bid strategy or budget or any other recommendations for how you can improve the performance of these products.
Check the “Product Diagnostics” and “Issues” for products in this category and prioritize the fixes.
Search interest up
This insight type shows when search interest increases for one of your product categories. You can view whether there’s room to increase your bid or budget to ensure you’re capturing the demand. Use these insights to prioritize actions you can take to improve the performance of products in this category and benefit from the increased demand. Learn more about search interest.
Performance down
This insight type shows when your products in a certain category are experiencing a drop in performance. You’ll find a breakdown of any changes that have happened with your products in the same period of the insight and which may have caused the change in performance. Use these insights to investigate why these products may not be performing as well as they were and identify adjustments and optimizations that could help optimize the performance.
