Google Shopping & Performance Max: A Setup Guide That Protects Your Budget

Performance Max (PMax) can drive excellent results for e-commerce stores — or quietly spend your budget on branded searches and remarketing that would have converted anyway. The difference is in the setup.

Start with the feed

Your product feed is the foundation of Shopping and PMax. Google uses it to decide when and where to show your products.

• Write descriptive titles that include the product type, brand, key attributes (colour, size, material) and the words people actually search for.
• Fill in GTINs, brand, product category and as many optional attributes as possible.
• Use high-quality images on clean backgrounds for the main image.
• Fix every disapproval and warning in Merchant Center.
• Add custom labels for margin tier, best-sellers, seasonality or price band.

Track conversions correctly

• Use Google Ads conversion tracking with enhanced conversions.
• Pass accurate purchase values.
• Make sure only the purchase is set as the primary conversion for e-commerce campaigns.

Structure Performance Max with intent

Instead of one campaign with every product, split asset groups or campaigns by:

• Product category, when categories have different audiences and creatives.
• Margin tier, so you can set different ROAS targets.
• Best-sellers versus long tail, so top products don't take all the budget.

Control brand traffic

PMax will happily show ads to people already searching your brand. Use brand exclusions in PMax and run a separate, low-cost brand Search campaign so you can see true new-customer performance.

Feed PMax good assets

Provide high-quality images, logos, headlines, descriptions and videos for every asset group. If you don't add video, Google may create one automatically — and you probably won't love it.

Use audience signals

Audience signals (customer lists, website visitors, custom segments based on searches) help PMax start learning faster. They're hints, not hard targeting.

Optimise weekly

• Check search term insights and add negative keywords at account level where needed.
• Review product-level performance and move under-performers into separate campaigns or exclude them.
• Refresh creative assets regularly.

Don't forget Search

Standard Search campaigns still give you precise control over high-value keywords. Many accounts perform best with a mix of PMax, standard Shopping and Search.

Need help? Our Google Ads team audits feeds and campaigns and rebuilds structures around profit.