Monitor and optimise your Shopping campaigns

After you get your Shopping campaign running, you need to check how it's performing to make sure that you get the results that you want. You can monitor the performance of your campaign in a few key places in Google Ads:

• Product groups page
• Products page
• Dimensions page
• Auction insights report
• Bid simulators

If your Shopping campaign isn't performing as expected (for example, low impressions, clicks or conversions), there are several areas to investigate. Common issues can include problems with your product data in Google Merchant Center, restrictive bidding strategies or the campaign being in a learning phase. This guide will help you understand how to monitor your campaign and identify potential areas for improvement.

Bear in mind

Shopping ads are generated based on the product data that you've set up in your Merchant Center account. Your ad performance is tightly linked to this data, so it's crucial to ensure that your product information (for example, price, availability, delivery details, product identifiers) is accurate and up to date in Merchant Center. Inaccurate data, such as price mismatches between your feed and landing page, or incorrect availability, can lead to product disapprovals and significantly impact campaign performance. Regularly check for and resolve any disapprovals or warnings in Merchant Center. Find out how to check the quality of your Merchant Center data feed.

Troubleshooting common product data issues:

• Price mismatches: Ensure that the price in your feed matches the single, clearly displayed price on your product landing page. If you are using variants with different prices, each should have a unique URL or use structured data correctly. For dynamic pricing, use URL parameters for Google's crawlers. Allow 24–48 hours for corrections to reflect after a re-crawl.
• Availability: Keep product availability status (in stock, out of stock, pre-order) current in your feed.
• Missing attributes: Ensure that all required attributes (for example, 'age_group', 'condition') are included in your feed.
• Promotions not appearing: For sale price annotations or promotions, ensure that the 'promotion_id' attribute is correctly mapped in your product feed. Verify that sale prices meet historical pricing requirements and allow 24–48 hours for new promotions to become eligible for display. Google dynamically decides which annotations appear, so they are not guaranteed.

Use the Product groups page

The Product groups page is the first place you can check to find how your product groups are performing. Customise the columns that you view and download reports with segmented options.

You'll be able to view these types of information:

• Maximum cost per click (max. CPC)
• Impressions
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Conversion metrics
• Benchmark click-through rate (CTR)
• Benchmark maximum cost per click (max. CPC)
• Impression share
• Click share
• Absolute top impression share
• Tracking templates
• Custom parameters
• % approved
• % active
• % ready to serve
• Products submitted
• Products approved
• Products active
• Products ready to serve

Learn more about these columns and what they mean.

Plus, you can download a report and add segments to the report to view your performance by days of the week, click type or device. Note that you can’t segment impression share, benchmark CTR or benchmark CPC by device or click type.

Here's how to download a report from the 'Product groups' page:

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Campaigns drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Campaigns.
4. Click the campaign that you wish to run a report on.
5. Click an ad group in the campaign.
6. From the page menu on the left, click Product groups.
7. Make sure that the table is displaying all of the columns that you may want to edit. Then, click the download button .
   • If you want to segment your data by device, day of the week or click type, click More options, then click the Add segments drop-down menu and choose the option that you want. You won’t be able to segment your impression share, benchmark CTR or benchmark CPC data by device or click type. You won’t be able to mark this segmented report 'Editable'.
   • Click Email now to email the report to specific recipients. You can choose the file type as well.
   • Click Schedule to email the report to specific recipients in your selected file type at a regularly scheduled time, whether 'daily', 'weekly' or on the 'first day of the month'.
8. If you download an editable report, you'll be able to use it to make bulk changes to product groups, bids, tracking templates and custom parameters. Find out more about downloadable reports and bulk uploads. Bear in mind:
   • You can’t download an editable report using segments.
   • Make sure that you save your spreadsheet in one of our supported formats (.xlsx, .tsv or .csv).
9. Click Download.

Use the Products page (Shopping only)

The Products page helps you understand the performance of individual products in your campaign. Here are the customisable columns you can find:

• Item ID
• Title
• Channel
• Channel exclusivity
• Merchant ID
• Brand
• Price
• Condition
• Language
• Product type
• Category
• Custom label
• Product status
• Impressions
• Clicks
• Average cost per click
• Effective maximum cost per click (effective max. CPC)
• Conversion metrics
• Absolute top impression share

Learn more about these columns and what they mean.

Note: Differences in impression counts between Performance Max item-level reports and campaign-level reports are expected. This is because item-level reporting focuses specifically on Shopping inventory and doesn't represent all the channels where a Performance Max campaign can serve. Additionally, Shopping ads may show many products in an individual ad slot, and each product collects an impression. However, the campaign, ad group and ad recognise that only a single ad was showing and will count it as one impression. As a result of these factors impressions and other metrics in item-level reports may be higher or lower than campaign-level reports.

Use the 'Predefined reports' page

Note: The Google Ads report editor will reflect attribute values, such as custom_label_0, that are no longer present in the Google Merchant Center feed if the product served with those values in the past. This ensures historical accuracy by preserving the attribute values that were active when the ad was served.

The Predefined reports page provides customised performance reporting at any level of granularity by any dimension that you choose, including:

• Category
• Product type
• Item ID
• Brand
• Merchant Center ID
• Store ID
• Channel
• Channel exclusivity
• Benchmark click-through rate (CTR)
• Benchmark maximum cost per click (max. CPC)
• Impression share
• Click share
• Absolute top impression share

Here’s how to view performance data from the 'Predefined reports' page:

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Insights and reports drop-down in the section menu.
3. Click Report editor.
4. Click 'View all' in the 'Predefined reports (formerly Dimensions)' card.
5. In the Shopping section, then choose the attribute that you want to use to sort your performance data: category, product type, item ID, brand, Merchant Center ID or shop ID.

To customise the information that you want to view in the report that you just created:

1. Click the edit row or column icon.
2. To add a column to the report, click Add, then choose the type of metric (for example, 'Attributes', 'Performance', 'Conversions', 'Competitive metrics') that you’d like to add as a report column. Repeat this for each column that you wish to add.
3. Click Add to select the columns that you want to view.
4. To remove a column from the report, click the X next to the name of the column that you’d like to remove.
5. To save your report settings, click Save as.

You can download non-editable performance reports from the Predefined reports page. Use segments if you’d like to view your data split into rows based on the options that matter to you most, such as days of the week, click type or device. Note that you can’t segment impression share, benchmark CTR or benchmark CPC by device or click type.

Here's how to download a non-editable report from the Predefined reports (formerly Dimensions) page:

1. From the Predefined reports (formerly Dimensions) page, make sure that the table is displaying all of the information that you want to view. Then, click the download button .
2. Choose the format that you wish to download your report in (for example, .csv).
3. Click Download.

Tip

You can also segment your performance data at the campaign or ad group level to compare traffic from the Google Search Network and Google search partners. Just go to the Campaigns or Ad groups page, click the Segment drop-down menu , and select Network (with search partners).

Use the Auction insights report

The Auction insights report lets you compare your performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same auctions that you are. This information can help you to make strategic decisions about bidding and budgeting choices by showing you where you are succeeding and where you may be missing opportunities for improved performance. This data is available from October 2014 to present.

Learn more about Auction insights for Shopping campaigns.

Use the bid simulator

Want to increase or decrease your bids, but not sure how it would affect your performance? The Bid Simulator can help bring clarity to how different product group bids might affect your traffic and conversions by estimating what your advertising results might have been over the previous seven days, if you’d set different bids.

Learn more about using the bid simulator with Shopping campaigns.

Related links

• Use the bid simulator for Shopping campaigns
• Fix issues with a Shopping campaign
• Best practices for Shopping campaigns