How do I write Google shopping titles?

A Shopping title can run to 150 characters, but only part of it is visible depending on where the listing appears, and the beginning carries the most weight for matching. Treat the opening as the whole title and anything after it as a bonus.

So front load. Brand, then what the thing actually is, then the one attribute a buyer would type. If your title opens with a poetic product name, a collection name or an internal code, you have spent the most valuable space on words nobody searches for.

The test is simple. Read the first seventy characters on their own. Could a stranger tell what the product is, who makes it and which version it is. If not, rewrite.

This is also why product page titles and Shopping titles often differ. On your own site the customer already knows they are on a product page for a specific item, and the surrounding page carries the context. In a Shopping listing the title is the context. Duplicating your on site title into the feed is the most common reason a well stocked catalogue barely shows.

Aim to be plain rather than clever. Clever loses matches.

Writing individual titles for a thousand products is slow and inconsistent. Writing a formula per category is fast and produces titles that stay correct as the catalogue changes.

The general shape is brand, product type, then the attributes that matter in that category, then the variant. What belongs in the attribute slot changes completely between categories, which is why one universal formula does not work.

For apparel, size and colour matter, plus material and fit. For electronics, model number, capacity and connector type. For consumables, quantity, weight or serving count, and flavour. For parts and accessories, the thing they fit, expressed the way the buyer says it. For furniture, dimensions and material. For beauty, shade, size and skin or hair type.

Pick the two or three attributes people genuinely search on in your category, not the ten your product record happens to hold. A title crammed with every attribute reads as spam and dilutes the match.

Then build the formula in your feed tool from the fields you already have, and let it generate the titles. Review a sample of a hundred by eye before you push it live, because rules always produce a few absurd results.

Some content is not just ineffective, it is against policy and can get products disapproved.

No promotional text. Free shipping, sale, discount, best price, buy now, limited time. Titles describe products, not offers, and promotional wording is a common cause of disapproval.

No block capitals. Occasional capitalised acronyms and model codes are fine. A title shouted in capitals is not.

No keyword stuffing. Repeating the same term, or listing every synonym you can think of, makes the title worse at matching rather than better, and it reads as spam to shoppers who do see it.

No store name in the title unless you are the brand. Adding your shop name to every product wastes the front of the title and does not help matching.

No punctuation clutter. Pipes, brackets, exclamation marks and decorative symbols make the title harder to read and add nothing.

And nothing that is not true of that variant. A title claiming a size or colour that does not match the item is a mismatch between the feed and the landing page, which is a bigger problem than a weak title.

Every variant is a separate item with its own title, and the variant defining attributes should appear in the text as well as in the structured fields.

The reason is behavioural. People search with the attribute included. Someone looking for a specific size of a specific product types the size. If your five sizes all carry the same title, none of them matches that search particularly well and the system has to guess which to show.

So generate the variant part from the option values rather than typing them. Size, colour, capacity, pack quantity, whatever defines the variant in your catalogue.

Order matters. Put the more searched attribute earlier. In apparel, colour is usually searched more than size. In consumables, flavour is usually searched more than pack size. Look at your own site search log for evidence rather than guessing, since your customers may be different.

One caution. Do not let the variant text push the product type out of the first seventy characters. If the formula produces long titles, shorten the brand or the descriptive words, not the identifying ones.

And keep the colour name plain. Invented shade names belong on the page, not in the matching text, so pair them: the shade name and the plain colour.

The search terms report in your ads account is the only feedback loop that matters here. It tells you the words people used to reach your products, and it will contain phrasing you never considered.

Run the report monthly. Look for two things. Terms that convert well but are missing from your titles, which is a signal to add that word to the formula for that category. And terms that spend money without converting, which is often a sign the title is too broad and is attracting the wrong search.

Compare impressions before and after a title change, product by product. A well built title change usually shows up as more impressions on more specific searches rather than as more impressions overall, and that shift is the win, because specific searches convert better.

Change titles in the feed rather than in the store where you can, so the on site title stays written for humans and the feed title stays written for matching. If your setup only allows one, prioritise the feed version and make sure the page still reads well.

Then leave it alone for a few weeks. Changing titles constantly makes the effect impossible to read.