How do you optimise a Google Shopping feed for pet products?

By Geetika Saini, Founder, Pet Tails Marketing · 13 October 2026 · 6 min read

Write titles that front-load what a shopper types (brand, product, pet type, key feature, size or flavour), fill every attribute that applies to your products, set the right Animals and Pet Supplies category, and use custom labels to group products by margin and role. The feed is your keyword list in Shopping, so its quality decides where you show.

Why does the feed matter so much for pet brands?

Shopping ads and Performance Max do not use keywords the way Search does. Google reads your product data to decide which searches your products match. If your title says "Daily Chews 90ct", Google has little to go on. If it says "Hip and Joint Chews for Senior Dogs, Glucosamine, Chicken Flavour, 90 Count", it can match far more relevant searches.

Pet catalogues add extra detail: species, life stage, size, flavour and pack count. These are the words shoppers type, and they belong in your data.

How should you write product titles for pet products?

Google's title attribute guidance says titles can be 1 to 150 characters, and that shoppers usually see only the first 70 or fewer depending on screen size. So put the most important words first. Google also advises including the brand where it helps, adding variant details like size or colour, and leaving out promotional text, prices and all caps.

A simple order works for most pet products:

Keep titles honest and matched to the landing page. For supplements, keep disease words out of titles. Health policy applies to feed data too, which we cover in our pet supplement ad policy guide.

Which product category should pet products use?

Google assigns a category to every product automatically, but the google_product_category attribute lets you set it when the automatic choice is wrong. You can submit either the ID or the full path, not both. From Google's product taxonomy, common pet categories include:

• 1: Animals & Pet Supplies
• 5081: Animals & Pet Supplies > Pet Supplies > Pet Vitamins & Supplements
• 5086: Animals & Pet Supplies > Pet Supplies > Pet Medicine
• 5004: Animals & Pet Supplies > Pet Supplies > Dog Supplies > Dog Apparel
• 3530: Animals & Pet Supplies > Pet Supplies > Dog Supplies > Dog Food
• 3367: Animals & Pet Supplies > Pet Supplies > Cat Supplies > Cat Food

Note the difference between supplements and medicine. A supplement filed under Pet Medicine sends the wrong signal.

Which attributes matter most?

Work through this checklist for every product.

1. GTIN. Google's GTIN guidance recommends submitting it for every product the manufacturer assigned one to. Products with missing or wrong GTINs may have limited visibility. Store brand and private label products without a GTIN should leave it blank and submit brand and MPN instead. Never invent one.
2. Brand. Your own brand name, spelled the same way everywhere.
3. Product type. The product_type attribute holds your own category tree, up to 750 characters, with levels separated by " > ", for example Dog > Supplements > Joint. Only the first value is used to organise bidding and reporting, so submit one.
4. Size and item group ID. The size attribute page says to submit size for all products that vary by size, with each size as its own item and one shared item group ID across the variants. Do not list several sizes in one value.
5. Colour, material, pattern. Important for apparel and gear, where shoppers filter on them.
6. Images. Clean product shots on a plain background as the main image. Lifestyle images with pets work well as additional images.
7. Description. Expand on the title: who it is for, what is in it, how to use it, what size to pick.

How should pet brands use custom labels?

Custom labels let you group products by things only you know, so you can split campaigns and bids by business value. Google's custom label page confirms there are five (custom_label_0 to custom_label_4), each up to 100 characters, with up to 1,000 unique values per label. Customers never see them, and they are used for Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen.

Margin labels are the most useful. They let you hold low margin products to a higher ROAS target than high margin ones. Our ROAS and breakeven guide shows how to work out those targets.

How do you keep the feed healthy week to week?

1. Check Merchant Center diagnostics weekly for disapprovals and warnings.
2. Keep feed price and stock in sync with your site, so shoppers see the same thing in the ad and on the page.
3. Review search terms in Shopping reports and add the winning phrases to titles.
4. Re-test titles on your top sellers one change at a time, so you can see what moved.
5. Update season and role labels when the season or catalogue changes.

Feed work is unglamorous, and it pays back across every Shopping and Performance Max campaign you run. If you would like a hand, see our Google Shopping services.

Written by Geetika Saini, Founder, Pet Tails Marketing. Pet Tails is a Mumbai-based growth agency for pet supplement, pet apparel and veterinary brands in the USA and Canada. This article is general information, not legal or regulatory advice.