How to prepare for big events and product launches

To ensure the success of any large event or product launch that you may have planned for your website, it's a good idea to review your Shopping campaign structure and Merchant Center data. You'll want to verify that your product data is accurate and up to date, and make sure that your Shopping campaigns and landing pages are properly set up.

This article outlines the checks that you should conduct before any sales event or product launch.

Make sure that your product data is ready

Product data in Merchant Center is the foundation for your Shopping ads and free product listings, so it should always be accurate, up to date and of high quality.

Submit product data with the right timing

Prior to an event or product launch, it's important to account for processing time to ensure that your data is ready. For example, it can take up to 72 hours for your feed to be crawled after it is submitted for an initial review.

Tip: Submit any new product data 3–5 business days before a launch or sales event, but no earlier than 30 days in advance. For wireless project launches, refer to our Best practices for listing wireless products and services.

If you take pre-orders

• Before the launch date, set the value for the availability [availability] attribute to pre-order and set the value for the availability date [availability_date] attribute to the official release date of the product. This will allow you to take orders for the product even before it's released for sale.
  • Note that 'taking orders' refers to the complete transaction, including paying for the item in advance.
• On or after the launch date, set the availability [availability] attribute to in_stock.

If you don't take pre-orders

• Prior to the launch date, submit your product and set the value for the availability [availability] attribute to out_of_stock.
• On or after the launch date, once you're accepting orders for the product and can fulfil purchase requests, set the availability [availability] attribute to in_stock as soon as you're able to.

Note: It may take up to 24 hours for an item set to in_stock to be shown in your campaigns or free listings.

Provide all necessary product data and follow Merchant Center requirements

Google uses product data to ensure that your ads and free listings are matched to the right user search queries. The better your data, the more likely it is that your products will be shown to interested shoppers. Learn more about product data specification.

The following tips can help your data perform better:

• Avoid using promotional text like 'fast delivery' or 'buy one get one free' in your title or image.

• Enable automatic item updates to minimise mismatches in product price and availability between your data feed and landing page, which can lead to disapprovals or account suspension.

  Note: Automatic item updates are not a replacement for feeds or for regular updates of your product data.
• For new product launches, make sure that you submit accurate and complete product information to set your ads and free listings up for success.
  • Obtain and submit the correct GTIN [gtin] values.
  • Optimise the product title to display the most important product information.
  • Build the values for your product type [product_type] attribute to at least three levels to capture the most relevant search traffic.

Have enough product capacities in your account

If you have received a warning about exceeding account capacity, you can request additional quota with the Request for additional quota of items, feeds or sub-accounts form. Expect a notification within seven working days letting you know if your request has been approved.

Note: For Comparison Shopping Service accounts, please get in touch with your Google contact.

Upload the special event logo 2–3 days in advance

If you plan to switch to a special logo during an event, allow enough time for the logo to be reviewed.

Test your promotions and submit at least 24 hours before the launch

Promotions are usually reviewed within 12 hours of uploading but may take longer during peak times. Learn more about promotion approval process.

Ensure that your website and landing page are ready

Check your landing page prior to and during big events. Having a stable and working landing page is important, as your products may be disapproved in Merchant Center if the landing page is crawled and returns an error.

• Ensure that content on your landing page is consistent. Don't change the content based on user variables such as IP address, location, browser, device type or cookies. Consider using stable landing pages for Shopping ads. Learn more about landing page requirements.
• Test your page with Googlebot crawling capabilities. If your site can't be crawled, your items will not be eligible to be shown. Learn more about the robots.txt file.
• Follow best practices for crawl rate.
  • Test your page with the robots.txt testing tool, Rich Results test and set the Googlebot crawl rate to 'Let Google optimise for my site'.
  • Confirm with your web developer that your site or server has enough capacity to handle a high volume of traffic within a short period of time. If your site is down or times out while loading, your items may be disapproved.
  • Use our PageSpeed Insights tool to check your site loading speed.
  • Avoid large-scale changes to the structure of your site and landing pages, such as moving the location of price information within the source code or using JavaScript or other animations to display prices or price reductions. These may result in temporary product disapprovals as we crawl your landing page to gather information such as price and availability.

Tip: If you have planned site maintenance before the event, follow Best practices for landing page maintenance or a planned site outage.

Get your campaign ready

Follow these guidelines to ensure that your Shopping campaigns are set up correctly to deliver ads successfully during your event.

• Double check your inventory filter and product group status. Avoid targeting the same products in multiple campaigns with the same target audience or leaving products untargeted.
• Set the correct campaign launch date and priority. Campaign priority is useful when you're advertising the same product, for the same country, in multiple Standard Shopping campaigns. Learn more about campaign priority for Shopping campaigns.
• Make special considerations for Performance Max campaigns.
  • Give a new campaign 2–3 weeks to adapt before making any changes. Performance Max campaigns use Google AI, which takes time to optimise. Learn more about optimising Performance Max campaigns.
  • Pause other campaigns for the same products or groups of products. Performance Max campaigns take priority over Standard Shopping, Smart Shopping and display remarketing campaigns for the same account, regardless of priority setting. After your Performance Max campaign is up and running, we recommend pausing your Standard Shopping, Smart Shopping and display remarketing campaigns to ensure that Performance Max can successfully take it over completely. Learn more about Performance Max campaigns.

Related links

• Tips to help your products stay approved
• Best practices for landing page maintenance or a planned site outage
• Make your products stand out and maximise your reach across Google's channels
• Optimisation tips for Performance Max campaign for all business types