Google Shopping: Advertising a Catalogue, Not a Keyword

In search advertising you write an advert and buy a keyword.

In shopping you write no advert and buy no keyword.

So what do you buy?

The rule

In search you buy a keyword. In shopping you buy a feed.

You send your catalogue ← then the engine decides which product matches which search.

And you write no advert headline ← your product title is the advert.

And you pick no keywords to buy ← your data is what gets matched.

And the three consequences the rest of the course rests on:

1. The lever is in the file, not the campaign ← improving the data changes the outcome more than adjusting the budget.

2. You cannot write your way out of a bad title ← what is in the title is all that is read.

3. You steer by exclusion, not by selection ← and that is the whole of lesson five.

What actually appears

What the searcher sees before clicking: an image, a title, a price and a shop name ← and your product sits among other products, with their prices.

So the comparison happens before the visit ← not after it.

And this inverts the whole calculation: in search you persuade after the click, and here you are compared before it.

When this course does not concern you

Four explicit cases, and I lose the sale on them:

1. You do not sell products with pages and prices ← services priced after a conversation, or work by the project ← so you have no catalogue at all.

2. Your price is clearly higher, and your distinction is in the service rather than the product ← the buyer here compares on a grid, and does not see your service ← and your place is search, where you can explain.

3. Your product is not searched for by name ← something new or rare whose name people do not know to type.

4. Your store is not in order ← old prices, or stock that is not updated ← shopping publishes your chaos precisely.

And the second is the most honest and the most painful ← whoever ignores it pays for clicks from people who saw their price and carried on comparing.

Its relationship to the feed course

And this is a fair question: if the feed is everything, why two courses?

Because they are two different things:

"The Catalogue and the Feed" ← builds the file itself: the fields, the identifier, the single source, the updating, the errors ← and it serves four destinations rather than one.

And this course ← runs a campaign on that file: the structure, price and competition, exclusion, automation, and reading at product level.

And the order: that one before this ← whoever runs a campaign on a broken feed pays precisely for nothing.

And I will repeat nothing here from there ← no field names, no identifier rules, and no how to fix a rejection.

What this course does not do

I will not explain the interface buttons. Screens change every few months ← and what does not change is that your appearance is decided by what is in your file, and that your control is by exclusion.

And I will not state an amount or a rate ← what works for someone selling spare parts does not work for someone selling clothes.

And I will not promise you will compete with the large sellers on price ← you will not, and I will tell you where to compete instead (lesson four).

Action steps

1. Write the rule: in search you buy a keyword and in shopping you buy a feed.
2. Search for a product you sell and see how it is displayed beside others.
3. Write your price beside the prices of those who appeared with you.
4. Go through the four cases where this does not concern you.
5. Be honest about the second — where is your distinction actually?
6. Confirm your feed is sound before running a campaign.
7. Do not adjust a budget before inspecting your data.
8. Write the three consequences the rest of the course rests on.