Google Shopping ads are the product listings with a photo, price and shop name that appear above and beside the search results when someone looks for something to buy. I set up and manage Shopping campaigns for UK online shops as part of my Google Ads services, with the work starting where most Shopping results are decided: in the product data you send Google.
Why the product feed decides most of the result
A Shopping campaign has no keywords. Google reads your product feed, the file listing every item with its title, description, price, availability and identifiers, and decides for itself which searches each product is relevant to. If the feed says “Oak Table 120” and shoppers type “solid oak dining table seats 6”, Google has little to go on, and your products either do not show or show for the wrong searches.
That changes how the work is weighted. Bid changes and campaign settings matter, but they act on whatever the feed lets Google match. I spend the first weeks on titles, categories and missing attributes, because an improvement there helps every campaign that uses the feed, including Performance Max and free listings.
Who this suits, and who it does not
Shopping works best for UK retailers who sell physical products from their own website, with prices that can stand next to competitors’ on the same results page. It suits shops with a few dozen products as well as those with several thousand, though the structure is quite different for each.
It is a poor fit if you sell a service, if every product is made to order with no fixed price, or if your margins cannot absorb paid traffic at all. It also struggles where products are restricted under Google’s shopping policies, such as weapons and some healthcare products. In those cases I would say so at the start and suggest another route, such as ecommerce SEO.
What I manage
Merchant Center health
Every Shopping ad depends on an approved product in Google Merchant Center. I check the account’s business details, delivery and returns settings and the link to Google Ads, then work through disapprovals and warnings in order of how much revenue each one is costing. Setting up a Merchant Center account from scratch, or cleaning up a badly broken feed, is a separate piece of work I can quote for.
Feed optimisation
Titles rewritten so the words shoppers use come first, correct Google product categories, colours, sizes and materials filled in, and a valid GTIN on every branded product that has one. Where your ecommerce platform cannot output what is needed, I use a supplemental feed or feed rules rather than asking your developer to rebuild the export.
Campaign structure
Products are grouped by how they should be bid on, not by how the shop menu is organised. I use custom labels in the feed to mark margin bands, best sellers, seasonal lines and clearance stock, so a £12 accessory and a £400 sofa never share the same bid. Brand searches and generic searches can be split so you can see what each one really earns.
Standard Shopping and Performance Max
Standard Shopping gives you a search terms report, negative keywords and control over each product group. Performance Max uses the same feed but runs it across all of Google’s channels with far less visibility. I decide which to use per product range, and if PMax is the right answer that work is covered on my Performance Max management page.
Bidding
New campaigns usually start on manual or lightly automated bids while conversion data builds up. Once there is enough, I move to value-based bidding such as target ROAS, set from your real margins rather than from a round number. My ROAS calculator shows the break-even figure for your own margin before any target is chosen.
Purchase tracking
Smart bidding can only be as good as the sales data it learns from. I check that each purchase records the right value, excluding VAT and delivery if that is how you want to measure it, that duplicate orders are not counted twice, and that consent mode is set up properly for UK visitors. My guide on how to check your conversion tracking works covers the tests I run.
How I run it
- Review. I look at your Merchant Center diagnostics, the feed, the Google Ads account and your tracking, and agree a target based on your margins.
- Fix the foundations. Disapprovals, tracking errors and the weakest titles come first, because spend on top of a broken feed is wasted.
- Build or restructure. Campaigns and product groups set up around margin and stock, with negative keywords and campaign priorities in place before launch.
- Ongoing management. I read the search terms report, add negatives, adjust bids and budgets, and feed back which products are getting clicks without sales.
- Reporting. Revenue, cost, return on ad spend and the products driving each, in plain English, on a schedule agreed before work starts, with what I am changing next and why.
Common Shopping problems on UK shops
- Price mismatches. The feed shows one price and the product page another, often because a sale ended or VAT is handled differently. Google disapproves the product until they match.
- Delivery costs missing or wrong. UK shoppers see the delivery charge in the ad, and a wrong figure leads to disapprovals and lost trust.
- One campaign for everything. All products on the same bid, so cheap, high-volume items absorb the budget and the profitable lines barely show.
- Brand traffic inflating the results. People searching for your shop by name would usually have found you anyway, and blending them in makes the campaign look better than it is.
- Out-of-stock products still advertised. The feed updates once a day while the shop sells out in hours, so clicks land on items nobody can buy.
What you receive
A written review of your feed and account at the start, with the fixes listed in priority order. After that, ongoing management of the campaigns and feed, and regular reports with a call to go through them, at a frequency agreed before work starts. You keep full ownership of your Google Ads and Merchant Center accounts throughout, and I work through the access you grant me.
Pricing and next step
I do not publish a price list. Each quote is written after a free audit or a first call, in pounds sterling, and agreed in writing before any work starts. Your ad spend is paid to Google from your own account and is separate from my fee. If you would like to know what I would change first in your Shopping campaigns, get in touch with a link to your shop and I will tell you what I see.