Google Shopping Tutorial: How It Works and Benefits

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Among the product search and comparison services, Google Shopping is certainly one of the most appreciated overall. Advertisers have the advantageous opportunity to create and publish ads aimed at promoting products and services.

These can be conveniently purchased online within the Google SERP and on the display network. Essentially, Google Shopping is a great marketplace where, thanks to advertising announcements, the demand, made up of users and potential customers, can easily meet the supply, that is, businesses, commercial activities, and e-commerce portals that sell online.

In this brief guide, we will also see how to create the feed in PrestaShop for Google Shopping campaigns.

What is Google Shopping used for?

Google Shopping proves to be crucial for your business, as it allows internet users searching for a specific item to find the products that are part of your commercial offer. The items are displayed directly among the search results.

How does Google Shopping work?

The Search Network represents the most important distribution channel for Shopping Ads. In the same way as with text ads, those related to shopping are activated when the user types a search query. In relation to campaigns conducted on the search network, the query will trigger an advertisement only if there is a bid related to a specific keyword.

The logic behind this mechanism is based on ad auctions that compare the ads that have won the auction because they have proven to be willing to offer more.

For Google Shopping, however, the bidding mechanism does not revolve around the keyword system, as the decisive element consists of the products in the catalog. The Merchant Center on Google Ads makes them available. Your product catalog participates in the numerous auctions. It will be up to Google to best interpret the multiple queries typed by users, highlighting only and exclusively the relevant products, that is, those suitable for publication.

In light of the above scenario, the advertisement for the product you sell online will appear within the results page.

What are the main advantages of Google Shopping?

Focusing on Google Shopping is a great opportunity for your business, especially if you want to give a boost to your online sales and benefit from an increase in qualified traffic to your website. Those who find you through Google Shopping have a clear idea of what they intend to purchase. For this reason, there are all the prerequisites for achieving a conversion. The most desired one is certainly the online purchase. However, subscribing to the newsletter and social media pages should also be viewed positively for the future of your business, as you begin to create a relationship with the customer potentially interested in what you sell.

Thanks to Google Shopping, your business can:

attract users looking for a specific product available in your catalog. For this to happen, you need to opt for paid campaigns, closely linked to the product search;
carefully check the accuracy of the information about your items using the Product Feed;
compare various online stores. Potential customers can check among the search results where the product they are interested in is sold and then make their purchasing decision; the product photo, the store's location, and, of course, the price influence the final choice;
Google Shopping ads appear next to the classic search results but are separate;

Why is it crucial to integrate Google Shopping with your e-commerce platform?

For the fate of your business, it is essential to start off on the right foot. Integrating a resource like Google Shopping into your e-commerce portal allows you to give greater visibility to the products in your commercial offer.

To do all this, you need a Merchant Center account, which is a tool that allows you to upload both the data related to your store and the information regarding the products you sell to Google.

These will then be available for Google Shopping ads and will allow you to manage the product feed, which is a document formatted according to the requests made by Google. Generating it is very simple, as the procedure is automatic following the installation of the plugin in your e-commerce portal.

What are the necessary requirements?

To activate your Google Merchant Center account and, consequently, to ensure that your e-commerce portal complies with the guidelines set by Google, it is advisable that:

the sale of your items occurs directly;
the conditions regarding the sale and availability of the items, and, if applicable, returns, are clear;
the legal requirements related to data collection and storage are fully respected.

Only under the above conditions will it be feasible to proceed with uploading the first feed to Google Merchant Center.

It is worth noting that the Google Merchant Center feed is simply a data file, usually in xml or spreadsheet format, where the information about your items is organized. Google must read it so that your online store can participate in auctions without particular issues. Similarly, this is the primary source of valid information that allows Google to create shopping ads.

Keywords, title, description, and image type are not taken seriously into consideration in Google Shopping. The real decisive factor for the appearance of ads is the automatic combination of elements, taking into account the information present in the Product Feed fields.

Among these, the following should be mentioned:

Product Title: the link present at the top of the advertisement. Its purpose is to allow Google to identify the keywords related to the products on your e-commerce portal in relation to the search queries typed online;
Product Image: product photos must comply with the requirements of Google Shopping ads so that they can then serve as specific URLs on the website;
Product Category: this is not information that appears within the advertisement. It is only used by Google to categorize the products.

Since it is not possible to rely on keywords for activating ads on Google Shopping, it is very important to optimize the feed. Only in this case will the performance of campaigns conducted on Google Shopping prove to be fruitful.

If the feed is optimized, ads will be activated for relevant search queries. In this scenario, the chances that online users will decide to click on the ad will significantly increase, and in the event of generating a conversion on the website, such as an online purchase.

Creation of the Merchant Feed: what to do?

The first step to complete is the creation of a main feed. This is the data source that allows Google to start creating shopping ads. The language, destination, selling countries, and the method of inputting the Merchant Center feed must be included. The feed, as already highlighted, can be created in a spreadsheet or via stp or ftp. The main e-commerce platforms based on CMS have various plugins to create the feed for Google Shopping. Additionally, there are several SaaS services like Datafeedwatch or Bindcommerce.com that can assist us with this operation.

With the upload of the feed in the Merchant Center, your Google Shopping campaign begins.

How to create the Merchant Feed with PrestaShop?

PrestaShop offers various solutions to export and synchronize your products to Google Merchant Center easily. There are many dedicated feed plug-ins, the most valid ones are the following:

Product Catalog (CSV, Excel, XML) Export Pro

This is a PrestaShop module that allows you to create not only the Merchant Feed but also feeds for almost all similar services such as: Trovaprezzi.it, Criteo, Idealo, Kelkoo, Webgains, etc. It is not easy to use, but it is highly versatile and adapts to many exports, even for internal catalog checks through the convenient Excel export.

Google Merchant Center (Google Shopping) for PrestaShop

A PrestaShop extension completely dedicated to Google Merchant Center. The module exists in two versions, a basic one and a pro one. Both allow you to manage the feed for Google Shopping comprehensively with many features designed to maximize our advertising campaigns and reduce export errors. The module is highly recommended when you have large catalogs and need to decide which products to include in the data feed; for example, if we have products without MPN and EAN-13, we might choose not to export them to avoid errors that could lead to the suspension of the Google service.

PrestaShop Marketing Module with Google

The module is developed directly by PrestaShop, it does not allow for the scalability and configuration of the modules listed above, especially the exclusion of certain products, but it is simpler to use and configure for those who do not have particular experience with Google tools. If all the products in our catalog meet the specifications of GMC, and especially have EAN-13 and/or MPN and Brand, this module is excellent.

You can view the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUl1NuYISJY for more information regarding the PrestaShop Marketing with Google module.

Author: Loris Modena

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