Google's help page about Shopping ads has a paragraph, in the section on how they work, that most store owners never see. Google says it "may use content from your landing page, images, feed, and other signals, including content created by Google AI, to enrich your Ads."
Google's help names no campaign setting for it. To opt out, Google says, you reach out "to your account manager or by contacting us," and requests "are typically processed in 3-5 business days."
That's the pattern for this chapter. A Shopping campaign built on Google's defaults shows in more places, in more countries and with more words than the store owner chose. None of it is hidden, but all of it is easy to click past. This chapter goes through the settings we check before a store's first campaign goes live, most of them inside the Google & YouTube app on Shopify or the Shopping campaign setup screens. The examples come from the stores in this guide. Your store's setup will differ in the details. The checklist holds.
Google Can Add Text From Your Site or Its Own AI to a Shopping Ad. You Opt Out by Asking Google Support.
A Shopping ad starts from your product feed: the title, the image, the price. Google's Merchant Center help adds that it "may promote key product attributes using content from your landing page." The Shopping help page goes further and names "content created by Google AI" among the sources it may use to enrich the ad.
For many stores that's fine. For some it's a real risk, because an ad that carries a claim is your claim, whoever wrote it:
- Origin claims. A product line that says "Made in USA" has to meet the FTC's standard for that phrase. A store that sells some made in America products and some imported ones doesn't want a description borrowed from the wrong page.
- E-bikes. Shopping rules from Google ask for an e-bike's top speed in the title or description, and California law bars advertising some faster, modifiable vehicles as electric bicycles. Text that Google adds should not blur either.
- Pages that disagree. Chapter 8 showed one store whose ad, help center and refund policy described its returns three different ways. Any of those pages could feed the ad.
Decide before launch. If your products carry regulated claims, or your own pages don't agree with each other, ask Google for the opt-out and keep a record of the request. Either way, fix the pages first. A landing page that matches the feed is the best protection against words you didn't write.
Shopping Campaigns Start With Search Partners Switched On. We Switch Them Off for the First Month.
Google's instructions for creating a Shopping campaign say it plainly: "By default, Shopping campaigns show ads in a few places." The networks it lists are Google's own search results and search partners, the other websites that show Google's ads, so the default includes partners. To limit where ads appear, you "uncheck the box for any networks you want to exclude."
We uncheck search partners at launch. A store's first month of orders is what every later bid gets set from, and we've found partner clicks the hardest part of that month to read. So they wait. Once the account has steady orders, partners can be tested on their own and judged on purchases, the same way every other source is.
The setting sits under "More settings" on the campaign settings page, below the location options. It's easy to miss, which is why it's on the checklist.
"All Countries and Territories" Means Every Country Your Products Are Sold In. Most Stores Ship to Fewer.
Google's setup page explains its broadest location choice this way: if you select "All countries and territories," the campaign "will only show ads in the countries where your products are sold." That depends on how your Merchant Center account is set up, which may not match where you can ship profitably today.
Set the campaign's locations to the area the store actually ships to. For most of the stores in this guide, that's the United States. A store that leaves out some states, or charges far more to ship to a few of them, should match that in the campaign too.
Then open the location options and choose Presence, which reaches people who are in, or regularly visit, the places you target. The other option also counts people elsewhere who show interest in the places you target. A shopper outside your ship-to area can't take delivery, so we use Presence across the ship-to area.
The Shopify App Syncs Every Product by Default. It Can't Bring Over Rates From a Third-Party Shipping App.
Most of the stores in this guide run on Shopify, and most Shopify stores connect to Google through the Google & YouTube app. It handles more than people expect, and less than some assume.
What it sends:
- Your products. Google's Merchant Center help says that when you first set up the app, "all of the products that are available on your Shopify store are automatically synced with Merchant Center," and they "continue to sync automatically when any information changes." If you'd rather choose which products go to Google, the app lets you.
- Product identifiers, once you add them. If a product has a GTIN, the barcode number, you need to add it before the product can be published. A product without one needs a manufacturer part number and a brand instead.
- Conversion actions. Chapter 1 covered what the app sets up for tracking and why the purchase action needs checking.
What it doesn't send: shipping rates made by a third-party app. Google's help says shipping rate details "can't be imported automatically in Merchant Center if you use a third-party app to generate shipping rates in Shopify," and you'll need to set them up in Merchant Center by hand. The same page warns that updates from a platform like Shopify "may overwrite manual updates" made in Merchant Center. If your shipping comes from an app, check the shipping settings in Merchant Center after every change to your rates.
You Can't Swap a Shopping Campaign's Merchant Center Account Later. The Account You Pick First Is the One You Keep.
The first choice in a new Shopping campaign is which Merchant Center account to use, and Google is direct about it: "You can't change the linked Merchant Center account after you've created the campaign." If the store has more than one account, perhaps one an old agency set up and one the Shopify app created, confirm which one holds the current, approved products before you build. Picking the wrong one means building the campaign again.
A few more settings on the same screens:
- Feed label. It decides which of the account's product sources the campaign can advertise. Many stores have only one; check it anyway.
- New customers. By default, Google says, "campaigns bid equally for new and existing customers." That's the right place to start until the account has enough purchase data to tell the two apart.
- Product groups. You only need these at setup to limit which products run. Chapter 6 covered splitting them for bids.
- Local inventory. Google has said that local inventory ads will run by default in Shopping campaigns, in a banner on its setup page, and asks advertisers to review settings and inventory filters. That matters only for stores with a physical store and a local inventory feed. If that's you, decide whether in-store stock and online sales share one budget.
Two account-level checks round it out. Auto-tagging stays on, so every click carries its ID into your conversion data. And the store's own brand name gets its own campaign, which Chapter 12 covers.
Dynamic Search Ads Are Folding Into AI Max. Neither One Belongs in a New Store's First Month.
Dynamic Search Ads used to be how stores found searches they hadn't thought of: Google read the website and wrote ads for whatever it matched. Google is now moving that job into AI Max. Its Dynamic Search Ads help page says that "starting in February 2027, campaigns using Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) will automatically be upgraded to AI Max." Google's earlier announcement had given September 2026; the help page now gives February 2027. Campaigns using text customization, formerly called automatically created assets, are already being upgraded, starting in September 2026.
We don't use Dynamic Search Ads for stores. For a store, that discovery already happens in Standard Shopping. Every week its report lists the searches your product ads appeared on, and you paid for each click at a bid you chose. Those searches feed the exact-match keyword list and the negative list.
AI Max itself is on by default for new Search campaigns, so the store's exact-match campaign from Chapter 5 gets it switched off at build, along with text customization. The point of that campaign is control: the searches you chose, the ads you wrote, the bids you set. AI Max for Shopping, which can change product titles and send shoppers to other pages, gets its own look in Chapter 13, once the account has the orders to judge it.
Next: Performance Max Waits for About 30 Sales a Month. Then It Bids on Order Value, With Your Brand Excluded.
With settings in place, the account runs on Search and Standard Shopping until the orders come. Chapter 10 covers the order count that opens the door to Performance Max for a store, the value bidding it should run on, and why the store's own name stays out of it.
Earlier chapters cover ad copy from customer reviews and bidding on order value. Every chapter is on the guide's home page.
When we launch a store through Google Ads management, this checklist runs before any campaign goes live. Doing it yourself? Open your Shopping campaign's settings, expand "More settings," and check whether search partners are still ticked.
