A product title is the name you give an item in your product feed, sent in the title attribute, and it is the main line of text shoppers see on a Shopping ad or free listing. Google also reads it more closely than any other field when deciding which searches the product should appear for.
How a product title works
Shopping campaigns have no keywords, so Google matches a search such as “women’s waterproof walking boots size 6” against the words in your feed, and the title carries the most weight. It can run to 150 characters, but listings usually show only the opening part, and on a phone that can be well under 70 characters. The words that win the click therefore need to come first.
A dependable pattern is brand, then product type, then the attributes people search for. Which attributes matter depends on the category:
- Clothing and footwear: brand, item, gender, colour, size and material, for example the brand name followed by “Women’s Quilted Wax Jacket, Olive, Size 12”.
- Electronics: brand, product, model number and the main specification.
- Home and garden: brand, product, material and dimensions.
- Food, health and beauty: brand, product, variant and weight or volume, such as 500ml.
Each product variant needs its own title, so a size 8 and a size 12 of the same dress are listed separately, each naming its size.
Why it matters
Titles affect reach and click-through at the same time. “Classic Jacket” gives Google almost nothing to match and gives a shopper no reason to choose you over the listing beside it. A title naming the brand, material and colour can appear for far more specific searches, and specific searches tend to come from people closer to buying.
For a UK shop the wording must match how British people search. They look for trainers, jumpers, trousers, nappies and mobile phones rather than sneakers, sweaters, pants, diapers and cell phones. If your product data comes from an overseas supplier or a template built for the US market, those differences quietly cost impressions. British spelling counts too: colour, grey, aluminium.
The same title also feeds free listings in the Shopping tab and product results in Google Images, so a weak one costs visibility well beyond your paid campaigns.
Common mistakes
- Sending the website’s SEO title tag as the product title, complete with the shop name on the end.
- Adding promotional text such as “SALE” or “Free UK delivery”, which Google does not allow in titles.
- Writing titles in block capitals for emphasis, which breaks Google’s editorial rules.
- Putting the brand last, or leaving out size and colour on clothing.
- Stuffing in strings of keywords, which reads badly and can be treated as spam.
How to act on it
Export your products and sort them by spend or revenue. Rewrite the titles of your top sellers by hand. For the long tail, build titles from existing attributes using feed rules or a supplemental feed, so you can change the order of words without editing the website. Keep the facts consistent with the other attributes: if the title says navy but the colour attribute says blue, Google has to guess, and shoppers filtering by colour may never see the product. Use the search terms data from Shopping or Performance Max campaigns to find words people use that your titles are missing.
Change one group of products at a time and compare impressions and click-through rate over a fortnight or longer. Title work sits at the centre of how I run Performance Max and Shopping campaigns, because it improves every placement a product can appear in at once.