Manage a Shopping campaign with product groups

Inside a Shopping campaign's ad group, you'll work with your inventory to place bids using product groups instead of keywords. A product group is just a subset of your inventory that you define, and all the products inside it use the same bid.

This article covers how to create product groups, and also how to edit and remove them.

How product groups work

When you get started

When you first create a Shopping campaign, you'll have one ad group with one product group called "All products" that includes your entire inventory. We recommend that you split your inventory into smaller groups with subdivisions to make bidding more specific to your advertising goals.

Use product groups for bidding and reporting

Bidding: Set and revise bids for each product group as often as you need, or exclude a product group from your campaign.
Reporting: For Performance Max campaigns, reporting metrics can be different for the 'Product groups' tab when compared to the 'Campaign', 'Ad group' or 'Ads' tabs. This is because the 'Product groups' tab can only report on product level data.
- For example, when a Shopping ad shows many products in an individual ad slot, each product collects an impression. However, the campaign, ad group and ad recognise that only a single ad was showing and will count it as one impression.

How to use product group subdivisions to bid strategically

You can subdivide up to seven levels for each product group in any order that you want. You can have a product group for all your products and bid the same amount for all of them. In the opposite way, you can also have smaller product groups organised by brand or product category. Bear in mind that you can't set a bid on a product group that has been subdivided – you'll set bids on the product groups without subdivisions. Learn about best practices for Shopping campaigns

Each ad group in a Shopping campaign can have up to 5,000 product groups.

Note: When you edit your product group path, any value may be uploaded. It’s recommended that you use the value of attributes that exist in your Merchant Centre feed. After you’ve successfully made bulk changes, you can check in the products group tab if products are eligible to serve.

Attributes available for product group subdivisions

Product groups can only be defined by these attributes provided in your product data in Google Merchant Center.

Item ID: Your identifier (ID) for each product. Learn more
Brand: The name of the manufacturer of a product (Example: Google). The brand should be clearly visible on the front of the product packaging or label. Learn more
Category: An attribute based on the Google product taxonomy. Example of a category string: Clothing & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses. In your product data, the ">" characters define the hierarchical levels in the product category that you'll be able to use for subdividing product groups. If you don't submit a category, then we might assign one for you. There may be cases where Google refines the category further after it's been submitted. Though we do our best, some products may be miscategorised. Learn more
Product type: An attribute that you assign based on your categorisation. Example of a product type string: Home & Garden > Kitchen & Dining > Kitchen Appliances > Refrigerators. In your product data, the ">" characters define the hierarchical levels in the product type that you'll be able to use for subdividing product groups. Product types can be subdivided up to five times. Learn more
Custom labels: You can create up to five custom labels in your product data (Example of label values: seasonal, bestseller). Learn more
Condition: The state of a product (new, used or refurbished). Learn more
Channel: Where your products are sold, either 'Local' in a physical shop or 'Online' through an e-commerce store. Learn more
Channel exclusivity: Whether your products are sold locally, online or through both channels. Learn more

Note: When you change the attributes for your feed, for example if you subdivide your product groups within a Shopping campaign, those changes aren't automatically applied to your product groups. You must update your product groups within the ad group to reflect that new change.

Instructions

Create a product group subdivision

Sign in to your Google Ads account.
Click Campaigns in the page menu to reach the campaign page.
Click the campaign that contains the product groups that you want to edit.
Click the ad group that contains the product groups that you want to edit.
Click Product groups in the page menu to reach the product groups page.
Locate the product group that you want to subdivide and click + next to its name. For example, you might click the + next to the “All products” product group.
In the window that appears, select the drop-down menu next to 'Subdivide [name of product group] by' and choose a product attribute to define your new product group.
- Example: You might see 'Subdivide "All products" by Category'. This means that you'll subdivide the 'All products' product group by a category that you choose.
- If you want to use more than one attribute to define your product group, finish creating the current subdivision and repeat the steps above.
After you select the attribute to subdivide by, you'll see a list of possible subdivisions. Next to each possible subdivision, click the tick box to add the subdivision to your product group.
- Example: If you sell shoes and select 'Category', you might see these possible subdivisions: 'Sandals', 'Dress shoes', and 'Boots'.
For certain attributes, you can add the value to subdivide by manually. To manually add subdivisions:
- In the bottom left of the window, click Bulk add values manually.
- Next, enter one value per line, and then click Confirm.
Click Continue to review bids if you've finished creating subdivisions. You'll be able to review and edit the bids set for any new product groups that you created. If you instead click Save without reviewing bids, any new product groups that you created will use the default bid from the product group that you subdivided.
- Example: You subdivided 'All products' into two new product groups: 'new' and 'used' condition. The default bid for those product groups remains the same as 'All products', unless you edit them. You can click 'Continue to review bids' to make changes or change the bids at any time later on in the product groups page.
If you clicked Continue to review bids, you can set the bids for each product group using the 'New max. CPC' column.
Click Save to confirm your product group subdivisions and bids.

Edit or remove an existing product group subdivision

Click Ad groups in the page menu to reach the ad groups page.
Click the ad group that contains the product groups that you want to edit.
Click Product groups in the page menu to reach the product groups page.
Locate the product group that you want to edit and click the pencil icon.
Next to 'Subdivide [name of product group] by', select the product attribute you want to use to create your subdivision.
Click the tick box next to the values that you want to add to the product group. Click X next to the values that you want to remove from the product group.
Click Continue to review bids if you're done editing subdivisions. You'll be able to review and edit the bids set for any new product groups that you created. If you instead click Save without reviewing bids, any new product groups that you created use the default bid from the product group that you subdivided.
- Example: You subdivided 'All products' into two new product groups: 'new' and 'used' condition. The default bid for the 'new' and 'used' product groups remain the same as 'All products', unless you edit them. You can click 'Continue to review bids' to make changes or change the bids at any time later on in the product groups page.
If you clicked Continue to review bids, you can set the bids for each product group using the 'New max. CPC' column.
Click Save to confirm your product group subdivisions and bids.

Note: Excluded products from product groups may still receive impressions and clicks for 48 hours. Therefore, product groups may still keep and reflect information retroactively for future reference. In such instances, you can find data on excluded products in reports.

Choose how to view your product groups

You can change how you view your product groups by switching between those that appear at the top of your ad group’s product groups page. From either view, you can make bulk edits to the max. CPC bids for any of your product groups.

The Hierarchy view view shows the structure of your product groups. You use this view for adding and removing sub-divisions within your ad group.

The List view view shows all of your product groups in a list. This view is useful for sorting your product groups by column or seeing an overview of how each of your product groups is performing. You won't be able to make subdivisions from here.

If you select product groups in one view and switch to another, the product groups remain selected in the new view.

Filter product groups

Filter your product groups to search for the data that interests you the most, such as clicks, conversions or the average cost per click (CPC). Once you've created a filter, you can save it for easy access in the future.

Sign in to your Google Ads account.
Click Campaigns in the page menu to reach the campaign page.
Click the campaign that contains the product groups that you want to edit.
Click the ad group that contains the product groups that you want to edit.
Click Product groups in the page menu to reach the product groups page.
From the top of the product groups table, click the filter button
Choose the conditions for your filter in the section that appears. The table automatically updates to show you the data that matches your filter.
- You can specify multiple conditions within a single filter. Click in the filter section after adding a condition to add another. To remove a condition, click the X next to it.
- To save the filter that you've created for later use, select the 'Save filter' button and enter a name for the filter. The saved filter will now be available when you select filter conditions.
To return to an unfiltered view of your table, click X in the filter section.

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