Product Title Optimization for Shopping Ads on Google: the ultimate guide

Product title optimization is a very powerful approach to improve the performance of Shopping Campaigns in Google Ads. And it is overlooked by many advertisers. We have experienced performance uplifts of 20%-250% (!!!) for the many advertisers we have tested with. In this guide, you find an extensive overview of all the best practices when you start optimizing. 

What is product title optimization?

Product title optimization is the process of improving product titles with the goal to increase the searchability and performance of the product in search engines such as Google. It often comes down to adding words that you know a human will look for when searching for a product.

Why is it important to optimize the product title?

The product title equals the relevance of a search and is one of the product ranking factors for Shopping Ads on Google. A well-optimized product title is crucial while selling online; it is the first thing your potential customer sees while searching online.

Imagine looking for a black sweater with pockets on the front. If the shopping ad doesn’t include all those words, it won’t show up and you will miss a conversion.

8 best practices for Product Title Optimization 

From the many product title optimization we supported and analyzed, we summarized the 8 most important takeaways for you:

1. Avoid short/vague titles: utilize the 150 available characters

This is your chance to let Google know what the product is. The better you do this, the better Google can match your ad to relevant search queries. 

2. Include all relevant attributes of the product

People using very specific keywords are often the best-converting consumers. Make sure to add all attributes that describe your product. Go beyond the standard ones like color, size, etc. What words really characterize your product?

3. Frontload the most important characteristics

For two reasons it is important to place the most searched-for and most distinguishing characteristics of your products first:

1. Words in front of the title outweigh in the search algorithm. This is the same principle as SEO title optimization: the most important words need to be placed in front to increase their “weight”.

2. Improve the clickthrough rate (CTR) of your ads: only the first 20-30 characters get shown to most customers. So the first words are by far the most important to catch the attention of potential customers. If your product has a strong Unique Selling Point (USP), consider putting it in the visible area. Only if searchers hover over your ad, they get to see the first 70 characters, and only visitors of the product page on the shopping ads tab can see the full title. 

4. Use your customer’s language: integrate important keywords

You may use a feed management tool to create titles from your product data from a template. But does that mean your titles are complete and are a good fit with what people actually search for? It only starts from there. In most cases, there is much to add to create titles that perfectly match the language of your customers. Important words are just not in there yet. And by adding them the chance of showing increases drastically. Keyword research is the key to finding title enrichments and improvements. Producthero’s product title optimization tool (formerly known as Optimizer) has the powerful capability to analyze the search terms of your visitors and buyers. 

5. Create distinct titles for product variants

In case of different variants (types, formats, colors) of a product, make sure to distinguish. If titles are (almost) exactly the same, the chance of showing more than one item is smaller. By distinguishing the title the chance of serving more products for one search is higher. 

6. Make your title look well-ordered and appealing

• Capitalize The First Letter of Important Words 
• Use numerals for numbers, not spelled out (3 instead of three)
• Use pipes |  dashes – and slashes / as separators to make titles look better and structured
• Spell out measurements (inch instead of “)

7. Start with your bestsellers and good converting products

We see that in most Shopping accounts at least 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of the products. Start with your best-selling products with short titles and optimize those first. These are your low-hanging fruits. Second, go for the products that convert well, but could use some extra volume by increasing their findability.

8. Consider it a continuous process

Title optimization is not a one-time activity. Your assortment changes as well as search behavior. Make sure you allocate some time for optimization on a regular basis. 

Best practices and examples per vertical

The ideal setup of a product title differs per product. Based on both Google documentation and our own experience we created this overview of recommendations and examples per vertical. 

Please keep in mind that you should consider not putting the Brand in front of the title if the product does have a strong/recognizable brand. Unless your goal is to build brand awareness, it is better to add the brand at the back of the title.

What not to do when optimizing product titles for Shopping ads?

Avoid making the four mistakes below to improve the chances of your products being seen by potential customers.

1. Avoid capitalization 

Although it is good to capitalize the first letters of important words, do not capitalize whole words when this is not necessary.  This will be considered spammy. 

2. Do not use promotional text 

Do not use price, delivery time shipping, or words like “buy“, “free”, “sale”, or “best offer” in the title. 

3. Don’t use misleading titles 

Your product titles should be optimized to accurately describe your products. Don’t add words that don’t represent your product as it will not lead to conversions.

4. Be careful with abbreviations or acronyms 

If you use abbreviations in your product titles, make sure to explain what they mean. Otherwise, customers may not understand what you’re selling

Increase your relevance, optimize your titles

When you want to increase the visibility and performance of your Shopping Ads on Google, it is essential to optimize your product titles. Even without increasing your bid in the auction, you are able to grow the number of impressions, clicks, and conversions.

Oh, and do not forget to use Producthero’s product title optimization tool 😉 A very powerful and flexible product title editor, combined with smart recommendations to get you going!

As this tool is part of the Producthero Shopping Ad Platform, it has the capability to show which titles you should optimize based on their performance. Besides that, we use multiple sources (including ChatGPT’s AI) to create title suggestions based on product descriptions. This gives you suggestions that you can select which will be added to your product titles. 

Advertisers also use it to optimize the titles in countries with foreign languages, so that they can optimize product titles without having to hire translators. If you use a tool like Producthero you can change the title in your shopping ad without changing the product title on your website.