You can review competitive brands insights and product analytics directly in your Manufacturer Center account. This article describes how to view, download, and analyze information about consumer interest in your brand and performance of your products.
Competitive brands insights
Competitive brands insights help you better position yourself within the commerce ecosystem by showing which brands, other than yours, people are interested in. With these insights, you can make informed changes to improve your product marketing, adapt to changes to your competitive landscape over time, and hone in on your target audience.
These insights will be available when you select "Competitive brands" from the "Insights" menu.
Top competitive brands
Using the filters above the table, you can modify both the chart and the table to see how consumer behavior changes across different countries and product categories for your brands:
- Your brand: Select from a list of all verified brands.
- Category: Most granular product category.
- Country: All countries with sufficient traffic in the selected product category.
- Time range: Fixed to last month's data with updates available after the first week of the current month. For example, the data for November is available after the first week of December.
Product analytics
Manufacturer Center allows you to review and compare the impact of your brand products across Google, and track and compare your products' performance over time. Before we get into details about the different graphs and charts that Manufacturer Center offers, let's discuss some of the key metrics that we track for your products. You can use these metrics to prioritize and balance your investment based on impact and adjust your market positioning of different products.
- Impressions: The number of times an offer for your product has been shown when someone searches on Google
- Clicks: The number of times an offer of your product is clicked on
- Clickthrough rate (CTR): A ratio showing how often people who see an offer for your product end up clicking it.
Impressions, clicks, and CTR are calculated for all offers promoting your products on Google. These offers could have been created by you or any seller of your products. The offers could be paid (Shopping ads) or unpaid (free listings).
Product data requirements for product analytics
To view certain analytics, specific attributes need to be included in your product data:
- Item group ID
[item_group_id]: For access to top shared impressions, top performing groups, top trending groups, and product performance data in groups, item group ID[item_group_id]must be included and approved. Item group ID[item_group_id]is required for accurate comparisons between groups, so it's important that your data accurately reflects all product variants. - Suggested retail price
[suggested_retail_price]: For access to the top MSRP gaps report, suggested retail price[suggested_retail_price]must be included. Note that we can only calculate this for regions where the currency matches the MSRP provided for the product. If this metric is important for a specific country, you’ll have to provide separate feeds for each country with a different currency.- Countries with multiple currencies may result in inaccurate analytics for this field.
Learn more about Product data specification.
Product analytics graphs
These following graphs will be available when you select "Product analytics" from the "Insights" menu:
- Top groups KPI time series: An overview graph showing performance metrics trends (impressions, clicks or CTR) for top groups
- Top performing groups: The groups that had the most impressions or clicks during the selected time period. (Requires the item group ID
[item_group_id]attribute.) - Top trending groups: The groups with the largest change in impressions or clicks between the two compared time periods. (Requires the item group ID
[item_group_id]attribute.) - Top price changes: This table shows the products with the largest percentage change in their average price (weighted by impressions or clicks) between the two compared time periods.
- Top MSRP gaps: The products with the biggest percentage difference between their manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) and market price, weighted by impressions or clicks. (Requires the suggested retail price
[suggested_retail_price]attribute.)
By default, insights for all offers are shown. You can use the "View performance for" drop-down menu to show only insights for Shopping ads or free listings. This menu is available for all Manufacturer Center analytics.
Top groups KPI time series
Description:
- This graph compares the impressions, clicks, and CTR for up to 4 product groups along the selected time frame. By default, it compares the top 4 groups by impressions.
Value and actionable steps:
- Keep an eye on the relationships between your top performing groups in terms of impressions and clicks.
- Look for interesting trends and spikes affecting your products recently. This can help you identify if recent events or marketing campaigns have resulted in increased interest in some of your products.
Top performing groups
Description:
- This graph highlights the groups that are getting the most impressions and the most clicks.
Value and actionable steps:
- Keep an eye on the relationship between your top performing groups in terms of impressions and clicks.
- If you see a discrepancy (for example, the top performing group in terms of impressions is not the top performing in terms of clicks): If the top impressed groups are not the same as the top clicked groups, your top impressed groups may not be represented as well as they should be, which means that they lack information of interest to customers or that this information is of poor quality. Reach out to your data partner or work on your own to make sure that Google has the highest quality images for these products. This can be done by improving your feed or editing the products in Manufacturer Center. Also review product titles and descriptions, and verify the Google Shopping page that can be accessed from the Manufacturer Center for some products in the group. If you find there are errors with the data displayed on the Google Shopping page, please let us know. You might also consider supplying a feature description
[feature_description]or rich product content[rich_product_content]attribute to make these top products shine.- Also check the graph for products with shared impressions. This can help you determine if the reason for a low CTR is not due to the quality of your own content, but rather that another product (or products) is more likely to be clicked by customers.
Top trending groups
Description:
- This graph highlights the groups with the biggest change in popularity.
Value and actionable steps:
- Make sure that these items are well represented. Check the CTR for the items that are rising in popularity by looking at the Group Insights. If it's on par with your top trending items, you don't need to do anything.
- If you find that the CTR for these groups is below the CTR of your other top groups, work with your data partner or agency to make sure that the product content that you provide for these items is of high quality. Make sure that we have the best images you can find for these products, review the titles and descriptions, and check the Google Shopping page for some products in the group. If you find inaccurate or low quality product content on the Google Shopping page, you can submit feedback to Google. Also consider supplying a feature description
[feature_description]or rich product content[rich_product_content]attribute to make these top products shine.- Also check the graph for products with shared impressions. This can help you determine if the reason for a low CTR is not due to the quality of your own content, but rather that another product (or products) is more likely to be clicked by customers
Top price changes and top MSRP gaps
Description:
- These graphs are indicators of price stability. The changes are weighted by the impressions or clicks the items receive. Big changes can indicate a problem with your item's price competitiveness resulting in a drop in average market price for a certain product. Decreased supply or increased product popularity in a given market can also result in price increases.
Value and actionable steps:
- These graphs can help you find signals that:
- Your product pricing is unstable. Retailers are having trouble coming up with a price at which your product will sell better than the competition. Reach out to your top retailers and spot-check prices on Google and confirm if they are matching this discrepancy. Keep in mind that there may be some discrepancies in this graph due to cross-selling between different currencies.
- Always drill into these graphs and check the graphs for the variants in the unstable group.
- Find the items on the variants page that have the item group ID
[item_group_id]from the group, then see if the pricing for any item is particularly unstable. - Each variant will need at least 5 sellers in order to show this information.
- Your product pricing is unstable. Retailers are having trouble coming up with a price at which your product will sell better than the competition. Reach out to your top retailers and spot-check prices on Google and confirm if they are matching this discrepancy. Keep in mind that there may be some discrepancies in this graph due to cross-selling between different currencies.
Product variant and group analytics
These graphs are available when you select "Variants" or "Groups" from the "Products" section and click a variant or group from the list.
With this, you can view a range of analytics for single product variants and product groups. With this data, you can understand the performance of your brand products on Google. Certain metrics are only available for single product variants, and others are only available for product groups. To view metrics for product groups, an item group ID [item_group_id] must be provided for these products.
You can download your analytics data for variant or group insights as a CSV file by clicking the download icon 
By default, insights for all offers are shown. You can use the "View performance for" drop-down menu to show only insights for Shopping ads or free listings. This menu is available for all Manufacturer Center analytics.
Product data requirements for variant & group analytics
To view certain analytics, specific attributes need to be included in your product data:
- Item group ID
[item_group_id]: For access to top shared impressions, top performing groups, top trending groups, and product performance data in groups, item group ID[item_group_id]must be included and approved. Item group ID[item_group_id]is required for accurate comparisons between groups, so it's important that your data accurately reflects all product variants. - Suggested retail price
[suggested_retail_price]: For access to the top MSRP gaps report, suggested retail price[suggested_retail_price]must be included.
Variants graphs
The following graphs are available when you select "Variants" from the "Products" section and click a specific variant from the list:
- KPI time series: The overall impressions, clicks, or CTR of single variant products.
- Top search terms: Shows the search terms that result in a click or an impression for your product most often. The "Share" column ranks search terms as a percentage of all the search queries that resulted in a click or an impression for your product. The "Your CTR" column shows the CTR of the search query for your product. Top search terms help you better understand how consumers think about your products.
- Price trend: Shows the change in market price of your product during the selected time period. You can see the average or median price by impressions and clicks, and the most recent manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP).
KPI time series: variant performance trends
Description:
- This graph shows impressions, clicks, and CTR for your products.
- The impressions and clicks serve the same purpose at a variant level but may not always be available. The recommended actions here are the same as other KPI graphs: check CTR discrepancies, decide whether to add content, and check for products that are shown beside yours.
Value and actionable steps:
- If you find that some variants are missing from the graph, it could be that not enough sellers have that variant, sellers aren't highlighting it, or some variants aren't as popular as others (for example, some shoe sizes are searched for more often than others). Consider this as a hint but it may reflect information you already know.
Top search terms
Description:
- These are the search terms that customers are most likely to have entered that resulted in your product being shown and/or clicked.
Value and actionable steps:
- This graph helps you understand your product's perception. Check it for any product that is trending upward or downward. When used with the trending graph, this graph may indicate that a perception change is responsible for an increase or decrease in performance, which you can then act on accordingly.
Price trend
Description:
- This graph depicts how much the price of your product is changing and the average or median range of prices that your product can be sold at.
Value and actionable steps:
- Use this in combination with information about impressions and CTR to spot unexpected discrepancies and trends and communicate with your sellers accordingly.
Groups graphs
The following graphs are available when you select "Groups" from the "Products" section (requires item group ID [item_group_id]) and click a specific group from the list:
- KPI time series: The overall impressions, clicks, or CTR of all products that share a valid item group ID
[item_group_id]. The same graphs can also be selected for the related category of products so that you can compare your own products' performance against those of others. - Top products with shared impressions: The competing products that are frequently triggered along with a selected product in searches. This can be grouped by all brands or competing brands. (Requires the item group ID
[item_group_id]attribute.) - Top search terms: Shows the search terms that result in a click or an impression for your product most often. The "Share" column ranks search terms as a percentage of all the search queries that resulted in a click or an impression for your product. The "Your CTR" column shows the CTR of the search query for your product. Top search terms help you better understand how consumers think about your products.
KPI time series: group performance data
Description:
- This graph shows impressions, clicks, and CTR for your product groups, but also allows you to compare these values to the category benchmarks (by selecting "Bench. impr.", "Bench. clicks", or "Bench. CTR").
Value and actionable steps:
- Compare your CTR to that of your category competitors in order to identify products that can benefit from better representation online. If your CTR is suffering relative to category benchmarks, provide us with all product attributes, high-quality images, and detailed descriptions, and consider adding the feature description
[feature_description]or rich product content[rich_product_content]attributes.
Top products with shared impressions
Description:
- This graph shows you if your own products tend to show up in the same query results or if competing products are likely to show alongside yours in given queries.
Value and actionable steps:
- Keep an eye on these tables, particularly for your top trending groups. If a competitor's product is showing alongside yours in a context that makes no sense, this could be an indication that someone is attempting to optimize for your queries. If you think there is a reason to suspect this, contact us.
Top search terms
Description:
- These are the search terms that customers are most likely to have entered that resulted in your product being shown and/or clicked.
Value and actionable steps:
- When used in combination with "Top products with shared impressions", this graph may allow you to spot something that can help you adjust your marketing strategy and change the perception of your product (and you can see feedback here if this is working in a given region). Also, if you see terms here that shouldn't apply to a product that is being shown with yours in "Top products with shared impressions", reach out to us for support.