Product feeds have always been the awkward child of search marketing. They don’t sit neatly in a box. PPC teams use them for Shopping ads, SEO teams tend to ignore them, and clients usually don’t know who’s meant to own them. Which means feeds often get pushed to the bottom of the to-do list.

That’s a mistake. Because feeds aren’t just for paid search. They’re structured product data which include titles, descriptions, attributes, Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs), images; and how you handle them shapes both your paid visibility and your organic reach.

And here’s the big shift: Google has been pushing feeds harder into organic. Free product listings, richer results, and schema tie-ins mean feeds now sit firmly in the SEO camp as much as PPC. If you’re an SEO ignoring feeds, you’re missing one of the fastest ways to win visibility.

So let’s stop treating them as “someone else’s problem.” This guide breaks down why feeds matter for both PPC and SEO teams, how you can optimise them right now (yes, before Christmas), and why collaboration makes their impact on results even bigger.

What are Product Feeds?

At their core, product feeds are just structured product information: titles, descriptions, attributes, GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers), MPNs (Manufacturer Part Numbers), and images.

GTINs and MPNs help Google match your products correctly across both paid and free listings. Without them, products risk being excluded or miscategorised. There’s a difference between them that’s important to know. A GTIN is a universal product code like UPC, EAN, or ISBN; whereas an MPN is the maker’s own identifier. If you’re new to these, Google’s guide on unique product identifiers is the place to start.

Why should SEO teams care about feeds?

For years, product feeds were seen as “PPC territory.” But that’s no longer true and both SEO teams and PPC teams need to pay attention. Google is rolling out more organic-only features that depend on feeds, which means ignoring them now costs visibility on both sides.

Here’s what’s changed:

• Free Product Listings across Google: Your Merchant Center feed powers not only Shopping ads, but also organic listings in Search, the Shopping tab, and even Images. If the feed is weak – for example, there are missing GTINs, vague titles, messy categories, etc, both SEO teams and PPC teams lose out on visibility.
• Promotions in Organic Results (US-only for now): New for Q4, Event Promotions let you create a campaign around a theme, think Black Friday sale, Christmas gift shop, or Winter clearance. Instead of attaching a promo to every SKU (‘stock-keeping unit’ - unique product ID), you link to a dedicated landing page, upload up to three campaign images, and (if relevant) apply it to certain categories. Currently, these only show in free listings in the U.S., making them an SEO-only lever for now. That means SEO teams can finally use Merchant Center to dress up organic Shopping listings with visuals and sales messaging. And realistically, this format will expand internationally, so now’s the time to build your event landing pages and creative assets. For more information check out Google’s Event Promotions help page.
• Rich Snippets & Product Grids: When feed data (price, stock, identifiers) line up with on-site schema, Google is far more likely to show richer snippets or free product grids in SERPs. These drive higher CTRs for both paid and organic, and it’s one of the clearest examples of why SEO teams and PPC teams should stop working in silos.

The point: feeds are no longer just “ad plumbing.” They’re one of the few tools where SEO teams and PPC teams can make changes in the same place, and both benefit from the optimisation.

How Feeds Bridge PPC and SEO

For PPC, a well-optimised feed is the difference between paying over the odds for irrelevant clicks and running campaigns that actually work. Better titles and categories mean Google matches your products more accurately, so your ads get shown to the right people. That means better relevance, higher CTRs, and often lower CPCs too. Cleaner feeds don’t just help clicks; they improve your quality score, which feeds back into cheaper, more efficient campaigns.

For SEO, the same feed improvements directly impact organic performance. Cleaner product data helps Google crawl and categorise your site more consistently. Richer listings, especially when feeds and schema play nicely together, mean more visibility in free product results. In short, you look sharper without having to churn out more content.

And here’s the real kicker: the same fixes help both sides. Take a bedding brand that went from the incredibly vague “Luxury Duvet” product title, to “Luxury Goose Down Duvet – King Size.” Now, does that mean Google will only show this product for “king size goose down duvet”? Of course not; it still loves to mix in near matches. But by adding size and material, this brand becomes far more relevant for users actually looking for those details. If someone specifically searches “king size goose down duvet,” the brand is the perfect match. And if someone just searches for “luxury duvet,” the brand still has a shot, but with the bonus of showing extra info to help clicks and improve their quality score.

Quick Wins You Can Try Today

Optimising a feed doesn’t have to be scary. You don’t need fancy tools, months of planning, or a dev sprint. Some of the biggest improvements come from small, simple fixes that anyone can make. Here are the core fields to focus on, what they are, why they matter, plus where and how to apply those fixes.

Titles

What it is: Your product title is the main field Google uses to understand what you’re selling. Think of it as your ad headline and your title tag rolled into one. Beware, the title on your website (the “parent”) isn’t always the same as the title Google ends up using in Merchant Center (the “child”).

Why it matters: If your parent title is vague e.g. “Luxury Duvet”, that’s what gets passed into the Merchant Center. From there, you can add detail with rules (e.g. appending colour or size) but those rules only work if the attributes in your site are clean. If the colour is pulled from the website as “sky blue” for one product and “blue-sky” for another, your titles will end up messy. Same with brand: if the original data is inconsistent, Merchant Center rules won’t save you.

Things to try:

• Structure Decide what details should be in every title.
  • Brand
  • Product type
  • Key details (colour, size, material, style, etc.)
• Positioning Test the order of those details.
  • Brand > Product Type > Details (e.g. Nike Running Shoes - Women’s Size 6)
  • Product Type > Details > Brand (e.g. Women’s Running Shoes - Size 6 | Nike)
  • Details > Product > Brand (e.g. Size 6 Women’s Running Shoes | Nike)
• Specificity Layer in the extras that help differentiate.
  • Examples: “organic cotton,” “with pockets,” “extra deep.”

Where to fix it: Ideally in your website so your SEO team benefits too. If not, use Merchant Center rules or a supplement feed to layer in extra detail, just make sure the source data is consistent.

Alt text: A screenshot of Google Shopping ads showing women’s floral and patterned dresses from brands including SHEIN, Temu, Marks & Spencer, Crew Clothing, Boden, WoolOvers, and Roman. Prices range from £8.45 to £99.00, with promotional tags such as “15% OFF” and “£5 OFF” visible on some items.

Attributes

What it is: Structured data fields like GTINs, MPNs, product category, colour, and size. They sit behind the product but drive how it’s matched.

Why it matters: Attributes are the backbone of your feed. Missing or messy attributes mean products either won’t show at all, or will appear in the wrong place. GTINs are especially powerful, they unlock free listings and better matching in Shopping.

Things to try:

• Add GTINs wherever possible (quickest unlock for visibility).
• Map products to the correct Google Product Category – don’t let Google guess!
• Standardise values - no more “grey” in one place and “gray” in another.

Where to fix it: Usually on your website. Merchant Center rules or supplement feeds are great for patching missing fields, but ideally the data should be clean at source.

Descriptions

What it is: The longer piece of text explaining your product.

Why it matters: Descriptions don’t weigh as heavily in ads, but they do matter for free listings and organic search. They also help persuade customers to click on your listings.

Things to try:

• Write for humans! Explain what the product is and why it’s worth buying.
• Avoid duplication - don’t copy-paste the same line across hundreds of products.
• Add USPs like “free delivery” or “sustainably sourced.”
• Focus on benefits as well as features (“keeps you cool at night” beats “100% cotton”).

Where to fix it: On your website. Product descriptions live on-site, so writing them well supports both SEO and PPC.

Collaboration tip: This is more of an SEO job than PPC. PPC can flag gaps, but SEOs are the ones who can typically scale keyword-rich, user-friendly descriptions across the site.

Images

What it is: The product image that appears in your ad or free listing.

Why it matters: Your image is your ad. A vague or poor-quality photo kills clicks, no matter how good your title or description is.

Things to try:

• Use high-quality images that show the product clearly.
• Test lifestyle shots (product in use) vs product only shots.
• Make sure sizes and aspect ratios are clean, no squashed sofas or cropped shoes.
• Avoid generic stock photography.

Where to fix it: On your website.

Collaboration tip: Sometimes the biggest challenge is client buy-in. PPC teams can prove that poor quality images hurt performance, plus SEO teams can help argue the case from an organic visibility perspective too.

Custom Labels

What it is: Merchant Center-only fields you can use to tag products. Customers never see them, they’re purely for campaign management.

Why it matters: Custom labels give you control. You can tag products for seasonality, promotions, or margin, then slice campaigns and reports however you like.

Things to try:

• Tag seasonal products (e.g. “summer sale”).
• Flag high-margin products to track their performance.
• Label old stock so you can pause quickly.

Where to fix it: In the Merchant Center only.

💡 Important note: Don’t try to fix everything at once. Pick one field, make the change, and watch what happens.

What a Feed Audit Can Uncover

Run a feed audit and you’ll see your site laid bare. A feed pulls data straight from your website, so any gaps, inconsistencies, or outright mistakes come shining through. It’s basically your product data holding up a mirror and saying, “look at the mess you’ve been ignoring.”

Common things I’ve found in audits:

• Dozens of products with no GTINs or MPNs.
• Miscategorised products, e.g. sofas mysteriously filed under “outdoor accessories.”
• Sizes are missing completely because apparently everything’s “one size fits all.”
• Multiple different spellings of “grey” across the same site.

Why it matters: These issues don’t just tank your Shopping campaigns. They confuse Google, frustrate crawlers, and make it harder to get clean signals. A messy feed is usually a sign of a messy website structure, which means both PPC and SEO lose.

Collaboration moment: PPC teams spot the wasted spend when bad data pushes ads to the wrong searches. SEO teams see the missed visibility when products don’t appear in free listings. Fixing the feed means fixing both and usually forces a tidy-up of the website along the way.

Where to start:

• Pull a full feed export from the Merchant Center.
• Look for missing fields, duplication, and inconsistent values.
• Flag anything that doesn’t make sense (like a sofa categorised as a chair, or a skincare product with no brand).

💡 Important note: The beauty of an audit is that it gives you proof. When you can literally show a client or your team “here’s why half your products aren’t showing up,” it’s much easier to get buy-in for fixing it.

Small Changes, Big Results

Feed tweaks aren’t just good in theory, they have real-world impact:

• Simprosys shared a case study where a client added GTINs, MPNs, and brand identifiers in their free listings feed. Within about 10 days, impressions improved by ~95.7% and clicks increased by ~76%.
• DataFeedWatch shared a case study where fixing GTIN values and making sure best practices were followed (so nothing was disapproved) helped a client see big gains in Google Shopping conversions, nearly doubling in some instances by cleaning up the product identifiers.

Why this matters: These wins come from small but foundational fixes. When your products don’t have correct identifiers (GTIN/MPN/Brand), Google struggles to match them correctly, which reduces both visibility and eligibility. Once those are cleaned up, you unlock visibility in free listings plus more precise matching in Shopping ads.

Cautious note (because reality): If you’re a reseller (or selling the same product as many others), these identifiers are what let you “join the party.” Without them, Google may show competitor products instead. Also, even after adding GTINs, sometimes you won’t immediately see 100% perfect matching, because image quality, title format, and other attributes also influence what shows up.

Checklist: Making Feeds a Shared Task

If you want a quick way to break down silos, start with your feed. This isn’t about fluffy workshops or endless meetings, it’s about two teams working off the same data and fixing the same problems.

Here’s a starter checklist:

• Agree on a title formatDecide together whether to test “brand first” or “product first.” If PPC is rewriting titles one way and SEO another, you’ll confuse Google and customers.
• Share keyword insightsPPC has search term reports, SEO has keyword research. Combine them to decide what details belong in titles and descriptions.
• Audit categories togetherMiscategorised products hurt both channels. PPC pays for wasted clicks, SEO loses structure. Two sets of eyes spot mistakes faster.
• Flag missing attributes earlyGTINs, colours, sizes, MPNs - someone needs to own getting these right. PPC teams can’t optimise what isn’t there, and neither can SEO teams.
• Review images as a team.Low quality imagery drags down ads and weakens site trust. PPC teams see the CTR impact, SEO teams see organic engagement drop. Fixing it helps both teams.
• Test and learn (but be smart about it).Feeds are great for quick experiments. swap a title structure, tweak a label, and measure the impact. Just remember: don’t go wild right before peak. In Q4, focus on stability, consistency, and fixes you already know will work. Save the testing for quieter months.

The point: A feed is a shared foundation. Treat it that way and you get cleaner data, stronger visibility, and fewer “that’s not my job” arguments.

Alt text: A checklist table titled “6. SHOPPING & PMAX” showing 21 Merchant Center and Shopping Feed criteria with priority ratings. Items include settings like “Opted into Free Listings,” “Correct shipping/return/tax information,” “Product Titles highlighting correct information,” and “Correct Google Category type allocated.” Each row is assigned a priority level: LOW (green), MEDIUM (orange), or HIGH (red), with most entries marked HIGH.

Final Thoughts (& What to Do Next)

Feeds are one of the most overlooked levers in search. They’re the connective tissue between PPC and SEO teams, and they are the one place where both channels can see quick wins. Ignore them, and you waste money and miss visibility. Fix them, and suddenly everything runs more smoothly.

If you’re not sure where to start, here’s what I’d suggest:

• Pick one field (titles, GTINs, images, whatever’s in the worst shape)
• Fix it properly on your website, patch what you can in the Merchant Center, and measure the impact
• Share the results with your SEO or PPC counterpart

That’s it. No 50-page strategy, no endless debate about “ownership.” Just start, test, and learn.

And when it works? Shout about it. Post it in Women in Tech SEO, swap notes with your PPC or SEO teammates, and keep the momentum going. Because the more we treat feeds as everyone’s job, the faster they move up the priority list, and the more love (and budget) they’ll finally get.