SESSION NOTES #015. You better stop sleeping on Product Feed Optimisation.

"That sounds really manual and not worth it."

I was consulting at a luxury fashion label, helping manage their PPC agency between hires.

I'd been digging into shopping searches by revenue and had just suggested the agency add the best-performing product attributes into their shopping titles (lace, ruffle, long sleeve - that sort of thing).

That quote was their response. Five years of Google Ads experience on their side of the table, plus a dedicated "Feed Specialist" - and the idea was still dead in seconds.

The agency cited "low impact" and "high effort" as the cause of death, but I disagree.

My view is that feed optimisation is neglected simply because so few people ever learn how to do it. Once you learn it and set it up, you’ll see that it’s actually pretty “low effort” long-term and always worth doing.

So if you've been sleeping on Merchant Center attribute rules up until now, that's okay, this entry-level guide is for you. If you don’t run any Google Shopping ads, feel free to skip this one.

Firstly, a quick note on how to get there:

Data sources > Attribute Rules > Title* (or whichever field you’d like to make updates to)

^{*You may need to add “Advanced data source management” under add-ons first.}

Secondly, a less quick note on how to choose your attributes:

Keyword research to find your sweet spots and your blind spots - I've covered how to do that here.
Look at the attribute filters Google has built for your category on Google Shopping.

The attributes that show up in both lists are the ones to prioritise ✏️

Now to the good stuff! Updating the titles:

Keeping with the “coconut candles” theme. Say we’ve done our keyword research and we’ve decided we want to upgrade our product titles to this:

^{Montego Bay Rhythm -}^{Coconut & Lime}^{- 380g Soy}^Scented^{Candle -}^{Glass Jar}

^{[Product Name] - [Scent] - [Size] Soy Scented Candle - Glass Jar}

Google gives you a fixed set of fields, and there's no "scent" field. So in these examples we're putting the scent into the "color" field instead.

💡Method #1 Adding attributes into Product Titles using “Set to”

Use this method if: the attribute you want to put into the title already exists as a field in the feed.

Set to: Title + the field you want to include (e.g. Color) + any other keyword you want to add (e.g. Glass Jar)

💡Method #2 Adding attributes into Product Titles using “Extract”

Use this method if: the attribute you want to use exists in the product description but not in a field yet.

Extract: Choose the field you want to fill (e.g. color). Then write a list of every possible value you want it to look for (e.g. coconut, vanilla, sandalwood). The tool scans each product description, and where it finds a match, it writes that value into the field.

Once completed you can loop back to Method 1 and add this field into your title.

💡Method #3 Adding attributes into Product Titles using “Find & Replace”

Saving the best (and easiest) till last. Use this method if: you want to do a mass update of an attribute keyword.

Set "title" to "title" (yes, really - that's just how the rule builder works), then select "edit modification" > "find & replace".

In the example we’ve updated “Soy Candle” to “Soy Scented Candle - Glass Jar” across all product titles.

Final thoughts

Some things seem really complicated until they click.

That was attribute rules for me. For all the updates to Google Merchant Center’s user interface, it’s still as intimidating as ever.

I’m not a wizard (still waiting for my letter) but I do feel like one when I set up product feed rules, even if it is just a simple ‘find and replace’ modification rule.

So start small: