Occasionally, you may find that your Shopping campaigns aren't serving as many impressions as you would expect, or aren't spending much of your set daily budget. A Shopping campaign or products may not serve due to issues at either the Google Ads side or Merchant Center. In this article, we’ll outline common reasons why your ads or products may not be serving and how you can troubleshoot using the tools in Google Ads and Merchant Center.
Before you begin
What to expect when a campaign is enabled
If you recently enabled your Shopping campaign, or if you've made changes to an existing campaign, it can take some time for your campaign to start serving impressions or for performance to stabilize. Here's why:
- It takes 24-48 hours for newly created or edited ads, creatives, assets, products, or feeds to be reviewed in Google Ads and Merchant Center to ensure they meet all policy requirements.
- For campaigns using automated bidding strategies, such as Maximize Conversions or Target CPA, there may be performance fluctuations or changes in spend as Google Ads learns to optimize towards your set goal. This learning period can take 1-2 business days or longer. Avoid making further adjustments during this period to allow the system to properly optimize. Learn more about Duration of the learning period for campaigns and what affects it.
- It may take Google Ads some time to adjust serving if you make changes to your campaign settings. Allow the system time to reflect these changes and gather new performance data.
Recommendations
Recommendations help highlight opportunities to improve performance when your Shopping campaign is not running or is getting low traffic. For example, you can look out for the following example recommendation types when troubleshooting these issues.
Common recommendation types to fix campaigns not running:
- Campaign hasn’t started or has ended
- Create or unpause an ad or product group
- Fix Merchant Center account suspension
- Account budget exhausted
Common recommendation types to fix low traffic:
- Adjust your ROAS targets
- Adjust your budgets
- Fix not eligible products in your Shopping campaigns
If your ad or product still isn’t receiving any impressions after 3 business days, check the reasons listed in this article.
16 common reasons why your Shopping ads aren't running or are getting low traffic
1. Account issues
If your account is suspended, or if you have a billing issue on your account, you won’t be able to run your ads until the problem is resolved. Check your account status in Google Ads to determine if there are any flags or notifications about the status of your account.
Learn more about Account issues.
2. Merchant Center account issues
If all Shopping campaigns in your Google Ads account aren't serving, check your Merchant Center account to confirm whether it is suspended. Also, verify that your Google Ads account is properly linked to your Merchant Center account. If the accounts are not linked, your products will not be eligible to serve in your Shopping campaigns.
Learn more about Merchant Center account issues.
3. Date ranges and campaign start and end dates
Google Ads shows you performance data for the date range that you select. Make sure your campaign's start and end dates are correctly configured and that the current date falls within the specified range. If the campaign has ended or is scheduled to start in the future, it will not serve ads.
Learn more about Date ranges and campaign.
4. Targeting overlaps with other accounts, campaigns, or ad groups
You may have multiple Shopping campaigns or ad groups in your account that are eligible to enter overlapping auctions due to similar targeting. If you suspect targeting overlaps, try excluding audiences or locations from the conflicting campaigns to prevent them from competing with each other.
- Leverage the Shopping products report in Google Ads to identify competing products across campaigns.
- Add “Campaign” as a row under Item ID and sort by Item ID
- If an item ID is in multiple campaigns, review the product group bids.
- The campaign with the higher bid will likely win the auction.
- When bids are the same, the campaign with the higher priority setting will win the auction.
- Overlapping campaigns can be avoided by implementing product exclusions.
- Note: Ensure items are not being excessively excluded to avoid limiting performance.
Additionally, if you suspect targeting overlaps, try excluding audiences or locations from the conflicting campaigns to prevent them from competing with each other.
Learn more about Targeting overlaps.
5. Local Inventory Ads setup
If the campaign is a Local Inventory campaign, ensure that the setting is enabled to run these ads.
Learn more about Local Inventory Ads setup.
6. Ad schedule setup
Your campaign's ad schedule determines when your ads will show.
Learn more about Ad schedule setup.
7. Products aren't eligible to serve
The fastest way to verify if products in a Shopping campaign are eligible to serve is to check the Products tab.
Learn more about Products are not eligible to serve.
8. Outdated product groups
When setting up which products to run from your Shopping campaign in product groups, you can include all products or can select specific products by filtering.
Learn more about Outdated product groups.
9. Expired product data
All products expire from your Merchant Center account 30 days after the last refresh. However, products added directly in Merchant Center don’t expire. Learn more on how to Quickly add or update your products directly in Merchant Center. Products can be refreshed by re-submitting your data source or scheduling regular data source uploads. Google will also regularly check your website and refresh your products automatically if the product data can be validated, for example, by the crawling of schema.org structured data on your product landing pages.
To access your Data sources tab:
- In your Merchant center account, click the Settings & tools dropdown.
- Select the Data sources tab from the drop-down menu.
- If it’s been more than 30 days since the last upload, a new data source will need to be uploaded.
Go to your Merchant Center account
10. Expired items via the “expiration date” attribute
If products have been uploaded into the Merchant Center data source along with the expiration_date attribute, these products will not serve after the date included.
Learn more about Expired items.
11. Bid limitations and optimization goals
While it may be possible to serve ads with a very low bid, your campaign isn't likely to enter or win as many auctions and your ads may not have any impressions. For new campaigns, consider using 'Maximize Clicks' bid strategy to get more clicks. If the campaign has sufficient conversion data, consider switching to 'Maximize Conversions' bidding.
Learn more about Bid limitations and optimization goals.
12. Targeting is too narrow
While targeting settings help you find the right set of users most interested in your business, each time you add targeting or if you have issues with your remarketing lists, you narrow the potential reach of your ads. Review your targeting settings to ensure that you are not overly restricting your audience. Consider expanding your targeting options or removing unnecessary restrictions to increase your potential reach.
Learn more about Targeting is too narrow.
13. Conversion tracking issues
If your campaign is using Automated bidding to optimize towards conversions, but isn't getting sufficient conversion data or your conversion tracking isn't set up correctly, your ad may have limited serving. To resolve conversion tracking issues, make sure that conversion tracking is properly set up in your Google Ads account and that the conversion code is correctly implemented on your website. Verify the accuracy of your conversion settings and allow sufficient time for the system to gather conversion data.
Learn more about Conversion tracking issues.
14. Ad policy review status
The review status of your ads or products can impact your campaign’s ability to serve. If your ads are disapproved, review the specific policy violation cited. If you believe your ads are compliant with Google Ads policies, you can appeal the decision through the Policy Manager.
Learn more about Ad policy review status.
15. Auction dynamics
Other advertisers who participate in the same auctions as you can affect your campaign’s ability to serve.
Leverage the Auction insights report to compare performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same auctions as your customer.
- Open the campaign experiencing the performance fluctuation.
- Adjust the time period to the dates you’re interested in.
- Select Auction insights under “Insights and reports” to view impression share, overlap rate, and outranking share metrics.
- Ensure “Shopping” is selected in the dropdown.
The information in the report can help you understand whether competition may have changed prior to the fluctuation.
Learn more about Auction dynamics.
16. Certain features used in campaigns
Your campaign may be paused if:
- You’re using certain features
- Your account does not have a good history of policy compliance and positive user engagement.
Learn more about Certain features used in ad campaigns.
