Google Shopping for online shops: what determines the result
Google Shopping is Google’s format that shows a photo, name and price of your products directly in the search results, before the user has entered any website. For an online shop it is the channel with the shortest path from search to order and the only one where the quality of the product feed weighs more than the ad copy. The listing is assembled from the product data: a title of up to 150 characters, category, brand, availability and price, and the feed is refreshed at least once every 30 days to stay active. That is why money leaks mainly where the data is weak and campaigns are organised by catalogue instead of by profit.
Статус за България към 14.10.2026: Google Shopping не е официално пуснат за купувачи в България. Подробно и с източници: Google Shopping in Bulgaria: status.
My name is Hristiyan Panov — a performance marketing consultant with over 5 years’ experience and over €2 000 000 Managed advertising budgets for over 90 companies on Google and Meta. Below is a list of what needs to be in place before Shopping can work, and where Bulgarian shops most commonly lose money.
What do you need to get started with Google Shopping?
- Google Merchant Centre profile, linked to the advertising account.
- Product feed — a file or an automated link to the shop that provides the title, description, image, price, availability and a unique identifier for each item.
- Tracking conversions by order value, not just the number of orders.
- Delivery and Returns Policy — Google checks for them and rejects shops that don’t have them.
The first three are technical issues. The fourth is the main reason why most Bulgarian shops are shut at the entrance.
Why does the product feed determine the outcome?
With a Search campaign, you choose which keywords to target. With Shopping, Google decides this for you — and the decision is based mainly on the title and description in the feed.
That is why the title „Item 4412„ hardly ever appears anywhere, whilst ‘Men’s winter shoes, genuine leather, black, size 43’ covers dozens of actual searches. Rewriting the titles in the feed is the most underrated task in Shopping and almost always yields results before any change to the budget.
Where does money tend to be wasted most often in shopping campaigns?
- All products in one group with a single budget. Best-selling items earn just as much as those that never sell.
- Missing excluded words. You’re paying for searches containing the words „free“, „second-hand“, „repair“ or for other brands that you don’t sell.
- Products below the break-even point. With a margin of 25%, the threshold is 4.0 — a product that consistently underperforms erodes the profit from the others.
- Rejected items in Merchant Centre. The shop advertises 300 products, but only 180 have actually been approved. The others are simply missing from the auction.
How should you structure your profit-based campaigns?
Group the products according to how much they weigh, not according to how they are displayed in the shop. A practical three-tier system:
- Media. The small number of items that account for the bulk of turnover. A separate budget; top priority.
- Average. They are sold, but less frequently. Overall budget, monitored once a month.
- Queue. Everything else. A small budget; suspension of expenditure if there are no sales.
This structure does not, in itself, increase turnover. It makes it clear where the budget is going — and that is the prerequisite for any subsequent decision.
Shopping or Performance Max for an online shop?
Performance Max absorbs the Shopping inventory and adds YouTube, Display and Gmail to it. It gives greater reach in exchange for less visibility: with a standard Shopping campaign you see the searches and bid by product group, whereas with Performance Max a large share of the allocation stays with the algorithm.
A rule of thumb: with a clean product feed, stable tracking and more than 30 orders per month, Performance Max usually performs well. If you’re a new shop or have an unorganised product feed, start with a standard Shopping campaign until you can see which products are generating revenue.
Before switching, check three things:
- The feed is approved. A product disapproved in Merchant Center is missing from both campaign types.
- The conversion passes the order value. Without a value, Performance Max optimises for the number of orders, not for profit.
- Brand searches are excluded. Otherwise the campaign picks up traffic that the shop gets without it.
Do not leave both campaign types on the same products at the same time. Priority goes to Performance Max and the standard Shopping campaign is left with no impressions, and its data stops being useful to you.
What changes will the euro bring for Bulgarian shops?
Prices in the feed, in the shop and in Merchant Centre must match down to the penny. A discrepancy between the price in the advert and the price on the page will result in the product being rejected, and widespread discrepancies will lead to the entire account being suspended. This is a check well worth carrying out before any price change.
The discrepancy rarely comes from the price itself. More often it comes from the layer between the shop and Google:
- Structured data on the product page. If the page shows two currencies, the crawler reads the price from the structured data — it must be the same as the one submitted in the feed.
- The shop’s cache. The crawler sees the old price while the visitor already sees the new one.
- Rounding on recalculation. Promotional prices diverge after conversion, and the tolerance is down to the cent.
- The refresh cycle. A change in the shop only reaches the listing at the next feed submission.
The working order is simple: change the prices, refresh the feed manually, open the diagnostics in Merchant Center and clear the disapproved products before you touch any budgets. Also check products with a promotional price separately — that is where the discrepancy appears most often.
FAQ — Frequently Asked Questions about Google Shopping
What budget is required for Google Shopping?
It depends on the number of products and the level of competition. The practical minimum is a budget that generates at least 30 orders a month — below this level, there isn’t enough data to make confident decisions.
Why have my products been rejected in Merchant Centre?
The most common reasons are discrepancies between the price in the feed and in the shop, missing information regarding delivery or returns, a missing unique identifier, and photographs containing text or a watermark.
Do I need a separate Search campaign?
Yes. Shopping covers product searches, but not informational or brand-related searches. A separate Search campaign for your brand terms is the cheapest traffic you’ll be able to buy.
Can I advertise without Merchant Centre?
No. Merchant Centre is compulsory for Shopping and for the product component of Performance Max.
How often is the feed updated?
At least once a day, and if stock levels change frequently, every few hours. An advert for a sold-out product is a paid click with no option to order.
Conclusion
On Google Shopping, it’s the shop with the best-organised product feed that comes out on top, not the one with the biggest budget. Titles, stock levels and prices do the job that ad copy does on other channels.
If you’re already advertising products and aren’t sure which items are making a profit and which are eating into it, start by getting an independent review.
Request a quote for a digital audit →
Related articles: Google Shopping in Bulgaria: status · Merchant Center checklist · Performance Max: when it works · Google Ads account audit · Google Ads management
More on this topic: Consent Mode v2 and lost conversions · GA4 versus Google Ads
