A Guide to Google Shopping Ads for WooCommerce Stores (The Easy Way)

Did you know that almost 75% of eCommerce stores invest in Google Shopping ads?

But why?

Let’s check some statistics.

• 60% of all clicks on paid ads on Google are on shopping ads.
• Google shoppers convert at a rate of 1.91% – 9% after viewing a product detail page.
• The Google Shopping platform has a whopping monthly search of 1.2 billion.

Therefore, Google Shopping ads are significantly important for an eCommerce store to reach a broader audience and grow conversions, reputation, and revenue.

In this article, we will discuss all about Google Shopping ads and show how you can create WooCommerce Google Shopping ads.

Let’s dive in.

What are Google Shopping ads?

Google Shopping ads are a type of paid advertising that allows businesses to display product listings in Google search results and the Google Shopping engine. These ads typically include an image of the product, its price, and the name of the retailer.

To put it more plainly, Google Shopping Ads are advertisements for products you sell in your eCommerce platform, and Google places them at the very top of search engine result pages (SERP).

Product attributes like brand, category, and features all play a role in how Google Shopping Ads are tailored to a user’s interests. For businesses, this means getting in front of people who are actively looking for their products.

For example, when a user searches for, let’s say ‘blue jacket for girls,’ Google will display relevant Google Shopping Ads at the top of the result page.

When a user clicks on one of these ads, they are taken to the retailer’s website where they can purchase the product.

Also, you can select to run your WooCommerce Google Shopping ads on the display network. ads on The Google Display Network allows Google Shopping Ads to appear on sites and apps outside of Google Shopping and Google Search. As a result, businesses can advertise their products to a larger demographic.

Benefits of Google Shopping ads for WooCommerce stores

Google Shopping ads are a powerful tool for businesses using the WooCommerce platform to increase their online visibility and drive sales. These ads allow businesses to showcase their products in a visually appealing way and reach a highly targeted audience, making them more likely to catch the attention of potential customers.

Google Shopping Ads for WooCommerce offers a number of benefits for businesses. Here are some of them:

Better than search ads

Google Shopping ads are better for eCommerce stores because they allow the store to display an image of the product, the price, and the store name directly in the ad. This can help increase click-through rates and lead to more sales.

Additionally, Google Shopping ads are typically cheaper than traditional search ads and can be more targeted, as they only appear when someone is searching for a specific product.

Targeted audience reach

Targeting for WooCommerce Google Shopping Ads is determined by the product as well as its characteristics, such as the brand, category, and particular features. This helps to ensure that businesses are reaching the right people at the right time, increasing the chances that their ads will be seen by potential customers.

Increased visibility

Google Shopping ads are typically displayed at the top of search results, making them highly visible to users. Additionally, they include an image of the product, which can help to make them more eye-catching than traditional text ads.

Valuable data and insights

The Google Ads platform provides detailed information about how users are interacting with the ads, including the number of clicks, impressions, and conversions. This data can be used to optimize the ads and improve their performance over time.

Increased sales

By providing users with detailed information about products, such as pricing and availability, businesses can make it easier for users to find and purchase the products they are looking for. Additionally, the option to purchase directly from the ad can increase the conversion rate and make the purchase process more seamless.

Easy to use and integrate

Setting up google shopping ads for WooCommerce is pretty straightforward. They can be easily set up with the help of a Google merchant center account and linked to the Google Ads account.

Additionally, with the help of plugins such as WooCommerce Google Product Feed available in the WordPress repository, it can be easily connected to the merchant center account and start running the ads.

Cost-effective

WooCommerce Google shopping ads are a cost-effective way to reach a large audience and increase sales. Businesses only pay when a user clicks on their ad, making it a pay-per-click model which is efficient for budgeting.

How to create WooCommerce Google Shopping ads?

You will need three things to run a google ads shopping campaign.

1. A Google Merchant Center account
2. A Google Shopping ads product feed
3. A Google ads account

Let us walk you through the steps to creating a Google Shopping ads campaign.

Step: 1 – Creating a Google Merchant Center account

Go to the official site of Google Merchant center, log in with your existing Gmail account, or sign up with your email.

Agree to the terms when prompted.

You need to complete the following steps for the Google Merchant Center to work.

You need to submit your product feed to this account and after that connect it with the Google Ads account.

Step: 2 – Create a product feed

The creation process of WooCommerce Google Shopping ads is different from the traditional search ads. You can’t create shopping ads one by one from a Google Ads account. You need to submit a product feed and Google will create ads based on that.

A product feed is a file, usually in XML or CSV format, that contains a list of all the products and their details, such as title, description, price, and image, offered by a particular online retailer or merchant like you.

These feeds can be used to populate the products on a website or to submit the products to various comparison shopping engines, marketplaces, and other third-party platforms. It’s a way for eCommerce merchants to share their product inventory with other websites and marketplaces.

After you create your WooCommerce product feed file, you need to upload that to the Google Merchant Center. Adding a product feed to your Merchant Center account can be done in a number of different ways. You can make a product feed file in CSV format and submit it through your Merchant account.

You can also create a feed file manually using software like Microsoft Excel and upload the feed file. Or use a Google sheet to create and connect the feed. Having a large number of products, however, makes it difficult to create the product feed file manually.

Google also requires information on certain characteristics. A WooCommerce product feed plugin is your best bet.

Using a plugin of this type, you can generate a product feed for your WooCommerce items with the click of a button in the WordPress administration area. In addition, you can schedule a time to automatically retrieve the data from a URL or download it as a CSV file.

Once you’ve connected through a URL (Scheduled Fetch), any changes you make on the WooCommerce product pages will be reflected in the Google Shopping ads through the corresponding product feed.

Step: 3 – Upload the product feed file to Google Merchant Center

Go back to your Google Merchant Center and click on Products and click on the Upload file button. Or, if you are still in the process of completing your account details, click on the Add products>>Add Multiple Products at Once option.

Select your target country and language.

Google offers you several options to connect a product feed to the Google Merchant Center. You can create a Google Sheet file and connect it to the account. You can also upload a CSV/XML file or connect through API.

We will choose the Scheduled Fetch option. When you create a product feed file in your WooCommerce store and connect the URL through this method, Google will fetch all the updates or changes you make in your WooCommerce product pages.

Enter your file name and URL here and click on the Create Feed button to complete the process. Google will fetch your WooCommerce product details from the feed URL and forward them to your Google Ads account when connected.

You can click on Fetch now for Google to upload your products right away.

Step: 4 – Create a Google Ads account

Google to Google Ads and log in with your Gmail or sign up with your email.

Follow the prompts to complete your account.

Step: 5 – Link your Google Merchant Center account to the Google Ads account

From your Google Ads account, click on the Tools and settings menu and click on the Linked accounts option.

Search and find the Google Merchant Center option and link your account.

Step: 6 – Create a new shopping campaign

Create a new campaign and select Sales as your new objective.

Select Shopping as your campaign type.

After that Google will automatically select the Google Merchant Center account you linked and fetch product data from the product feed.

Set your budget, input your ad group name, and create your WooCommerce Google Shopping ads campaign.

How to create a product feed in WooCommerce?

We have discussed how to upload a product feed file in Google Merchant Center, but how do you create a product feed for your WooCommerce products?

You can create a Google sheet file and input your product data under the Google recommended attributes. Here are the required attributes,

• Product ID
• Product Title
• Link to product
• Image link
• Price

Besides this, you can also add a number of additional attributes to the feed file for Google to better understand and place your products in the right places/searches.

You can create a column for every attribute and place your WooCommerce product data under them. You can also create a CSV product feed file in Microsoft Excel as well.

However, this is a manual process, and can take a long time for you to create one product feed file.

This process can be a big hassle if you have a big WooCommerce store with a large number of products. Also, every time you make any changes to your WooCommerce products, you need to manually update the changes in the file and then upload again.

The best option is to use a WooCommerce product feed plugin such as the CTX Feed which can generate a product feed for your WooCommerce Google Shopping ads with a click of a button.

You can create the product feed right from your WordPress admin panel. The plugin makes connecting WooCommerce to google shopping ads a breeze. You can download and upload the file or also upload via URL.

Additionally, you can also filter your products by different conditions such as product status, category, IDs, etc., with the pro version of the plugin. Along with Google Shopping, the plugin also allows you to create product feeds for 100+ channels.

How to create a product feed file in WooCommerce using a plugin

First, go to Plugins>>Add New and search and find the plugin. Install and activate the plugin.

CTX Feed will create its own menu in the left panel.

Click on Make Feed and it will open a new product feed generation window.

From the Template dropdown, select Google Shopping.

Now give your file a name and select the file type.

As soon as you select the template, the plugin will automatically populate the necessary attributes required for that particular marketplace or ad engine.

Your job is pretty much done after selecting the template. You can go ahead and click on the Update And Generate Product Feed button. The plugin will automatically collect your WooCommerce product data according to the attributes and organize it in the feed file.

Go to Manage Feed and you will see the list of your created product feeds. You can edit, delete, duplicate, view, copy URLs, and download the file from different settings.

You can also set an interval period for auto-updates from this page. For example, if you set the interval value to 2 hours, all your product feed files will be updated every 2 hours. Any changes you make to your WooCommerce product pages during this time will be read by the plugin and updated in the feed file.

Google Merchant Center will then fetch those changes and automatically update the WooCommerce Google Shopping ads accordingly.

Let’s repeat the process of how you can upload the URL in Google Merchant Center. Copy the feed URL from the feed list and paste it into the Scheduled Fetch method.

Here’s how it looks in the Merchant Center after it fetches all your data.

WooCommerce Google Shopping ads best practices

Google Shopping Ads can be a powerful tool for eCommerce businesses looking to increase sales and reach a wider audience. By displaying product images, prices, and other information in search results, Google Shopping Ads make it easy for potential customers to find and purchase products directly from your website. However, to get the most out of Google Shopping Ads, it’s important to understand and implement best practices.

Optimize your product data feed

The first step to creating effective Google Shopping Ads is to optimize your product data feed. This feed is the source of information that Google uses to create your ads, so it’s important to make sure it’s accurate and up-to-date. Your product data feed should include detailed information about each product, such as the title, description, and image. It’s also important to include the right product categories and attributes, as well as accurate prices and availability.

Subdivide product groups in the shopping campaign

As we have seen when creating a new Google Shopping campaign, it lets you create a single Ad group. The amount you bid on will be applied to all of your products.

For example, if you put in a bid of $1 for the ad group, you will have to pay $1 for all your products/product ads. However, it’s not really a good idea because not all products are the same.

Some of them are better than others; for example, their selling prices vary widely. After clicking on one product, a customer may spend $100 on upsells but only pennies on a completely different product. One product’s sales are clearly thriving while another’s are clearly not.

Each click does not deserve the same budget. The same segmentation based on keywords is required as with standard Google Ads. Don’t give in to the temptation of setting the same bid for every keyword.

You should base your bids on what is actually generating revenue. In addition, this should be reflected in the bids you set for your product in Google Shopping ads.

Creating subcategories or subdividing groups for your products can help you better manage inventory and zero in on the optimal pricing strategy.

Offers can be lowered for similar products while raised for popular product types or individual products. It can also be used to see what search terms people are using. As a result, your final advertising decisions will be more informed ones.

Use negative keywords

Negative keywords are words or phrases that you don’t want your ads to show up for. For example, if you sell running shoes, you might use the negative keyword “cleats” to prevent your ads from showing up for searches related to soccer or football cleats.

Using negative keywords can help improve the relevance of your ads and prevent wasted ad spending on irrelevant searches.

Utilize Google Merchant Center

Google Merchant Center is a tool that allows you to manage your product data and track the performance of your Shopping Ads. By verifying and claiming your website on Google Merchant Center, you can gain access to useful features such as product data validation and performance reports. This can help you identify and fix errors in your product data feed, as well as track the success of your Shopping Ads.

Test and optimize

A/B testing is an effective method for optimizing your Google Shopping Ads. By testing different ad variations, you can determine which elements of your ads are most effective and make informed decisions about how to improve them.

Some things to test could be the ad copy, images, or pricing. Additionally, regularly monitoring and optimizing your campaigns can help improve performance over time.

Use remarketing

Remarketing is a powerful way to target users who have previously interacted with your website or products. By tracking users who have visited your website or viewed your products, you can create targeted ads that are more likely to convert. This can be a great way to increase sales and boost the ROI of your shopping campaign Google ads.

Utilize Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help you track the performance of your website and your WooCommerce Google Shopping ads. By setting up conversion tracking and monitoring your website traffic, you can gain valuable insights into how your ads are performing and where you can improve. Additionally, by using Google Analytics, you can better understand your audience and create more effective ads.

Wrap up

Creating Google Shopping Ads for a WooCommerce store is a powerful way to increase visibility and drive sales.  We at Master Infotech will help you grow your business. We provide complete 360 Digital Marketing Solutions.

By following best practices such as optimizing your product data feed, using negative keywords, utilizing Google Merchant Center, testing and optimizing, remarketing, using Smart Shopping Campaigns, and tracking performance with Google Analytics, you can create effective ads that reach your target audience and increase conversions.

Additionally, by using product feed plugins such as the one we mentioned above, you can easily connect your WooCommerce store to Google Merchant Center and create WooCommerce Google Shopping Ads without any additional effort. With the right strategy and the right tools, you can take your WooCommerce business to the next level with Google Shopping Ads.