If you’re looking for an effective way to group or arrange your products in your Google Shopping campaigns, look no further!
The Custom Labels Attributes in Google Shopping will help you do just that.
Custom labels are optional Google attributes that let you filter products in your feed that meet certain criteria of your choosing, which you can use for bidding or reporting on groups of products. Only you will have access to them, so the data you decide to include in custom labels won’t appear publicly.
In this article, we’ll discuss the benefits of custom label attributes and explain how you can set them up, in addition to reviewing some of the best practices and tips for using them effectively or in conjunction with other options. Let’s dive right in.
This article is part of our Google Data Feed hub.
Table of Contents
What Are the Benefits of Custom Labels Attributes?
Using custom label attributes for your Google Shopping campaign has several essential advantages, so let’s briefly cover them.
Better management
By categorizing various products with the help of custom labels, you can internally organize your products. This can come in handy if you’re managing more Google Shopping Campaigns at the same time, since you can find, modify, or adjust your products’ data faster than before.
Efficacy and flexibility
Since there are no written rules or custom labels you must use, you can edit custom labels as you wish, and you’ll have the flexibility to select your own criteria for organizing your products.
Track campaign performance
By using custom labels for specific products, you can keep an eye on your campaigns and how specific products perform. If you want to observe how a product performs for a target audience in several locations, add a custom label and keep an eye on the product whenever you want.
Up to five custom labels for a single product
Another great thing about custom labels is that you’re not limited to using one label for one product. You can create and customize from one to up to five labels for a single product, starting from “custom_label_0” right to “custom_label_4.”
How can custom label attributes improve your Google Shopping campaigns?
One of the greatest things about using custom label attributes is that they’ll help your products show up in the first few results on Google whenever someone is Googling “Custom Label Name.”
These attributes can help increase your products’ conversion rate given that your potential customers will be able to come across your products fast.
Additionally, you’ll be able to monitor the products that customers often purchase, so you’ll find out more about the frequency of purchasing specific products and improve your customer service to fit the needs of your clients from various locations.
Are Custom Labels Useful for Targeting Specific Audiences?
Absolutely! Using custom labels to target specific audiences is one of their most significant advantages. Since you can use and modify custom labels to categorize your products by various locations, you can create Google Shopping campaigns that will be uniquely tailored to the needs of your target customers.
All you have to do is update the custom labels on a regular basis and set appropriate parameters for the products for which you are using the custom label attribute.
How to Set Up Custom Labels Attributes
When setting up custom labels attributes, you need to follow specific guidelines provided by Google. If you’re not following them, there’s a chance that Google might not fully understand the information you submit.
These are some basic guidelines you need to follow:
- Type: Use Unicode characters. The recommended version is ASCII. The characters should not be case-sensitive.
- Character limits: You cannot use more than 100 characters. You can use 1,000 values for any of the custom label attributes that you’ll add. You cannot use more than 5,000 labels.
- Fields: You cannot repeat fields. However, you can create five different custom labels, starting from [custom_label_0] to [custom_label_4].
For text feeds: winter
For XML feeds: <g:custom_label_0>winter</g:custom_label_0>
If you’d like to modify the data to fit Content API, follow the guidelines provided by Google.
Minimum criteria
To use custom labels and advertise your items, you have to meet Google’s minimum criteria. If not, Google can disapprove of the item and you’ll be informed through your GMC account.
These are the minimum requirements:
- A custom label attribute should have only one single value.
- You cannot create more than 1000 unique labels for one label attribute. Since you can create up to five custom label attributes, you can have 5000 labels but only 1000 for one single attribute. If you do not abide by this rule and exceed the amount of labels, Google will not register the supplementary labels, and they’ll be further assessed as they were not set in the first place. To avoid this, you can add fewer labels and resubmit the data.
- You should use these attributes only for Google Shopping campaigns. The grouping label attributes used specifically for Display ads are [ads_labels] and [ads_gruping].
Technical Guide for Setting and Using Custom Labels Attributes
First things first, you’ll need access to the item data in your Google Merchant Center account. As we’ve already mentioned, you have the option to add up to five different custom labels, from [custom_label_0] to [custom_label_4].
Once you add them, you can use and modify them across the items in your account and assign specific values to each custom label. Don’t forget that one custom label can have a single value per item.
Also, one product shouldn’t necessarily have a specific value for a custom label attribute. If you’re selling clothing articles and some of them can’t be categorized by season, you don’t need to define the season or choose a value.
After editing each custom label, you can start subcategorizing your items’ groups in Performance Max and Google Shopping campaigns. For example:
- [custom_label_0]: Add a definition, such as “Season.” Then, you can choose one of four values: “Spring,” “Fall,” “Summer,” or “Winter.”
- [custom_label_1]: Add a definition, such as “SellingRate.” Then, add one value, such as “LowSeller” or “BestSeller.”
- [custom_label_2]: Add a definition, such as “Clearance,” and choose the value “Clearance.”
- [custom_label_3]: Add a definition, such as “Margin,” and choose either “HighMargin” or “LowMargin.”
- [custom_label_4]: Add a definition, such as “ReleaseYear,” and add one value, i.e., a product’s release year.
What Are the Best Practices for Custom Labels Attributes?
Let’s learn more about the best practices for custom label attributes that can help you effectively manage your Google Shopping campaigns and optimize all your products.
Use more custom labels for one product
As we already mentioned before, you can use up to five different custom labels for one product. Using more than one custom label will help you categorize your product better, measure your performance, and identify shopping trends.
Define custom labels by yourself
Using custom labels means that you’ll get to define them by yourself. To do so, you need to add values for every product by accessing your Google Merchant Center account.
Automatically allocate custom labels
Using the feed rules to allocate each custom label, they’ll be assigned automatically, depending on the values you’ve already submitted about the product.
In case you’d like to add a custom label for various price ranges, the easiest thing is to set a unique rule, which will instantly apply values to the custom label that will be classified by cost range.
Should I Give Custom Labels a Shot?
If your current goal is to improve your results in Google Shopping, manage and organize your Google Shopping Campaigns more effectively, and increase your conversion rate, you should undoubtedly try using custom labels.
Custom labels can help you categorize your products and manage your account without much effort on your side. You’ll see that after a while, you’ll be glad you started using them.
