Google Shopping Custom Labels: What Are They & How to Use Them?

When it comes to shopping online, there are different variations of the same product which can be placed online. Products can differ by margins, inventory, seasonality, price, and so much more. While they seem to be trivial, they can help create better Google Shopping Campaigns.

Its essential that you understand the importance of having custom labels for your Google products. They can help in the process of organizing Shopping Campaigns to your preference, and then the tags can show up themselves internally. There are plenty of custom labels that can be used, including best sellers, seasonal, ROI, and more. 

These labels can be used to report, monitor, and even bid on future campaigns, making sure theyre handled the right way.

What is Google Shopping Custom Labels?

Custom labels are just another attribute that is present in the product feed. They can be used when youre setting up the shopping campaign. These labels can help customers identify, filter, group, and also structure products in a particular order. They can then apply these in the product listing ad strategies. 

You can use custom labels throughout all the products in the Merchant Center account. If you assign the appropriate value to each product according to the custom label definition, managing the account becomes relatively easy. 

Each one of five labels can have a single value per product. The custom fields can have values that end up varying based on your business needs and products. 

Why Do You Need Google Shopping Custom Labels?

Google Shopping Custom labels can make it easier to go forth and create segregations for products. How these custom labels are applied depends mostly on the USP, i.e., the products sold, the prices, the seasonal changes, etc. Here are some of the most common applications for custom labels –

1. Seasonality – Does your store sell any holiday items Or back-to-school gear Swimming trunks and the likes of ” Sweaters” By understanding what seasonality is, you make it easier to modify the bidding strategy according to the season-specific items. These items can be sold without having to go through the trouble of adding or removing them as required.

Once these products are segmented into groups that are season-specific, you can go forward and raise bids. As and when they are in season, you can decrease them by a large amount because they are less likely to sell during those times. The most significant benefit is that you can enjoy an off-season sale and also keep your ROI.

2. Price points – Suppose you have products that sell as low as $10 and some which sell as high as $10,000; you know your ROI might be erratic. To ensure the best ROI is what you get, you need a maximum CPC for the products that are less expensive and must be lower than the maximum CPC for the items that are higher priced.

Google wont allow you to segment products according to price yet, so you will have to do this manually on the dash.

The idea is that these products must be grouped based on price, and you must select a maximum CPC for each of the groups. An ad group that might be $30-$99 can have a CPC thats $1, while the highest-priced one – say around $5,000 can have a maximum CPC of $10. 

3. Profit – This is also known as margin bidding, and instead of grouping various products according to the sale price, you can segment them based purely on the profit thats made. These are different from the price point bidding format as two items selling for a similar amount of cash may have varying profit margins.

For example, a $250 auto part that generally sells for $400 v $500, versus a lawnmower that ends up selling at $500. They both trade at the same amount, but you end up earning significantly much more when it comes to the auto part. 

To bid the right way, you must understand the overall profit margin that these products have so that they can be segmented into different groups. They are then labeled by particular amounts, and you can put the ad spend on products, which can gain you a higher ROI. 

4. Promotions – There are two methods to follow when it comes to labeling products for promotions – either with an on-sale tag or a clearance one. If you want to rid yourself of the low-selling products sooner and make room for newer products, you can raise the maximum CPC to improve potential customers chances of casting their eyes on them. 

Also, since the profit margins tend to be lower than the margins of other products, you can reduce bids to maintain a more substantial ROI.

5. Performance – Performance is an excellent strategy for businesses to work towards when it comes to promoting those items that sell well while decreasing any marketing budgets for those products that lie on the shelves for much longer.

You can segment the products into groups depending on how well they sell and up or decrease bids to get the best ROI. 

Google Shopping Custom Labels – Requirements

You can create custom labels for attributes, and these are some of the requirements youll need to showcase the products. In case you dont follow them, the product can get disapproved.

The product feed can have up to five custom labels. You need to specify the values for each one of them properly. Make sure you use them consistently for all products in the account and assign the correct value according to the label definition.

The custom labels can have only one value for each product.

The values for these fields might vary depending on the products and the unique needs of the business. Some common examples can be adopted by most of the sellers –

1. Seasonal – ie. Spring, Winter, Summer, Fall
2. Price Point – i.e. Under 50, Under 10, Under 100, Over 100
3. Profit Based – i.e., LowMargin, HighMargin.
4. Promotional – i.e. Clearance, OnSale
5. Performance – BestSeller, LowSeller

There are up to five labels that can be placed in the product feed. These generally begin with 0 and end with 4. You have to ensure that a specific definition is assigned to every one of the five custom labels you place. You must also specify them correctly. 

You can create specific feed rules in the Merchant Center to assign the custom labels using the GMC workflow. Heres how it can be done –

1. Click on the Products in the navigation panel, and then on Feeds. You can click the Add target attribute thats at the bottom of the page
2. Next, you can choose the create a value based on criteria in a feed field option and go forth and create your own rules.

You can submit only a single value for each custom label attribute. You can create more than 1,000 unique labels for the custom label attribute for the account. 

In case you submit products that come with a customized label post exceeding the limit, you wont see any reporting on these products with those labels. You can reduce the total number of unique labels and resubmit the product data.

Google Shopping Custom Labels – Best practices

The best practices are a great way to go beyond whats basic and optimize the product data for better performance –

• Create up to five custom labels for each product: custom_label_0 right through to custom_label_4
• You can choose your definition for the five custom labels. You need to understand the possible value that goes into each of the labels. You can add these values to the product in the Merchant Center account based on the definition.
• You can also use the feed rules to assign custom labels based on the values that are already submitted in the product data. For example, you can use a custom label to represent various price ranges and set a rule that applies a specific value to the custom_label_0 based on the price range. 

How to Add Custom Labels Google Shopping to Your Feed?

Once youve decided on the custom labels that youd like to use, heres what you can do to add them to your campaigns – 

1. Define custom labels 

You need to decide the definitions of the custom label and the possible attribute values for the same. Create a database where you can state the custom labels and what they also represent. It can be a simple spreadsheet, but the point is to ensure that you document what these custom labels mean. 

For example, 

1. Clearance = Discounted products
2. LowPrice = Products that are under $10
3. HighPerformer = Products which have conversion rates that are 3% and higher

2. Assigning values 

Assign the necessary values to each product. As noted, you can also name the custom labels however you want, but what theyre called must be standardized to a particular degree.

For example, Camel case(LowMargin) or underscores (Low_Margin). Or abbreviations such as (U5000, O100) or full text (Under5000, Over 100).

Whats most important is to stick to one style and keep it consistent throughout. 

3. Adding custom labels to the product feed 

Adding the custom labels to the product feed is another great way to go about this. The easiest way this can be done is to use a management tool for the data feed to assign custom labels to any product using the automated rules. 

You can also add specific extra fields on the eCommerce platform manually. Most platforms allow you to create these additional fields, and youll need to spend extra time keying in more information.

You can also create specific feed rules in the Google Merchant Center to create custom labels with a GMC workflow. Heres how –

• Click on the Products tab in the navigation panel and then follow it up by Feeds. You can then proceed to Add target attribute at the bottom of the page.
• Next, choose the Create the value based on certain criteria in a field option, and go forth and create the rule.

4. Use Custom labels for your campaigns 

Once the product feeds are correctly updated, the final piece is to reorganize the Shopping campaigns. With the new Custom Labels available, you can determine the bidding strategy and adjust whatever your budget is accordingly. 

Google Shopping Custom Labels FAQs 

What does a custom label mean?

Custom labels are another attribute that is within the product feed. These can be used based on the shopping campaigns, with which you can identify, filter, group, and structure products to apply your strategies for product listing.

For example, you might want to use a different bidding strategy for specific items. Also, if you want to bid less for clearance items, you can create custom labels for them too.

Examples include –

1. Release Year
2. Bestsellers
3. Brand
4. Margin

Without these custom labels, you can still end up identifying and grouping products using categories and other attributes. These labels are a more accurate and better way to do this. 

How to exclude items from Google Shopping?

Here are the instructions you can follow to remove all or even some of the Google Shopping product ads 

Remove all listings 

1. Go to the GMA Products Feeds Page
2. Check the box thats next to the data feed file name
3. Click on the Delete Selected button

These items can be appropriately reported by adding the product data feed and resubmitting.

Removing individual listings from Google Shopping 

1. Go to the GMA Product List
2. Look up items by the ID and the search box, or page to the desired items
3. Check the boxes which are next to the items you’d like to delete
4. Click on Delete

To Conclude

Knowing how products vary based on specific attributes allows you to create custom labels that can organize and segment product catalogs before being pushed to Google Shopping. You can use these custom labels to create optimized campaigns with strategies tailored to each unique CPA.