Product category insights provide information about search trends and how your ads are performing against competitors. These insights provide recommendations that can improve the performance of your product categories.
This article explains the benefits of using retail category insights, the types of insights available, and where to find them.
Benefits
Product category insights can help you:
- Identify opportunities by providing information on demand and competition so you can adapt to market changes and grow your business
- Troubleshoot issues related to campaign and product setup
- Optimize performance by providing recommendations to implement in Google Ads and Merchant Center
Instructions
Product category insights are available both at the account level and campaign level
Products page
- In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon
.
- Optional:
- If you would like to view insights at a campaign level, click the Workspace filter at the top of the page, then select either Shopping campaigns or Performance Max campaigns.
- Click the Campaigns filter and select a campaign.
- Click Products.
- The retail category insights are available in two areas:
- An Insights table will appear above the Products table. Click the left and right arrows to view each insight, or click View details to learn more. In the panel that appears, click each dropdown to view related issues and recommendations. Apply the recommendations that work for your campaign and budget.
- Go to the Categories tab of the Products table. Here you will be able to click a category you’re interested in and you’ll find the category details page.
Types of insights
Each insight describes a change in the last 7 or 28 days and is paired with explanations and actionable recommendations. The top insights are featured at the top of the Products table.
By clicking on the “view details” button on each insight, you can see the insight details view. In this view, you can see a chart that shows the search trend alongside your performance over the period and any related metrics. By expanding each section, you’ll get more information on the issue and see suggestions for actions you can take to improve your performance in this category.
Search interest up and performance down
This insight type shows when search interest in a product category has increased but the performance of your products in that category has decreased. Use these insights to identify missed opportunities and solve issues while search interest is growing. You will be able to review if campaigns advertising products from this category are limited by bid strategy or budget or any other recommendations for how you can improve the performance of these products .
Performance down
This insight type shows when your products in a certain category are experiencing a drop in performance. You’ll see a breakdown of the changes that have happened to your products in the same period of the insight and which may have caused the change in performance. Use these insights to investigate why these products may not be performing as well as they were and identify adjustments and optimizations that could reverse the performance decrease.
Search interest up
This insight type shows when search interest increases for one of your product categories. You’ll see the issues impacting your products today so that you can prioritize fixes to make the most of the increase in search interest. Or you can see whether there’s room to increase your bid or budget to ensure you’re capturing the demand. Use these insights to prioritize actions you can take to improve the performance of products in this category and benefit from the increased demand. Learn more about Search interest.
