The Feed Audit: Diagnosing Why Half a Catalog Isn't Getting Clicks

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Paid Ads

All projects·From: Google Shopping & Performance Max

MiniAudit· 30 minutes

Lenskart

Objective: Given a real product feed export, apply the lesson's feed-quality levers (titles, GTIN/MPN, custom labels) to find why specific SKUs are getting zero Shopping traffic.

You're auditing Lenskart's eyewear product feed after noticing a third of the catalog gets almost no Shopping impressions despite healthy overall traffic.

Diagnose the feed row by row against the lesson's title, GTIN, and custom-label guidance, and flag the fixes with the biggest expected impact.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets

FreeImport and cross-reference the feed export to find weak titles and missing identifiers

Free, works entirely from exported CSVs, no ad account access required

The process

2 steps

Step 01 of 02

Writing product titles that mirror how shoppers search

The lesson contrasts 'Blue Shoe Men' (barely matches anything) against 'Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 41 Men's Running Shoe Blue Size 10' (matches dozens of real queries) — title is the most important feed field.

Six product rows are pulled from the feed. Which titles are too generic to match real search queries, and what's missing from each?

Google Sheets— Import product-feed-export.csv, review the 'title' column against 'category' and 'attributes'.

Procedure

Import product-feed-export.csv and freeze row 1
For each row, compare the title length and specificity against the product's brand/model/color/size attributes already in the feed
Flag any title under 40 characters or missing brand + model as a rewrite candidate

Sample output

SKU        Title                          Brand + Model in Title?   Impressions (30d)
LK-2291    Sunglasses Black               No                        14
LK-2292    Ray-Ban Aviator RB3025 Black    Yes                       1,840
LK-2340    Reading Glasses                No                        6

Healthy

Titles include brand + product name + key variant details (color, size, material); low-traffic SKUs share the same detailed title pattern as high-traffic ones.

Unhealthy

Generic titles like 'Sunglasses Black' get single-digit-to-low-double-digit impressions over 30 days while near-identical products with full brand/model titles get thousands.

What this means

Google matches queries against title text; a title with no brand or model simply doesn't overlap with the specific terms shoppers type.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
Title is under 40 characters and missing brand or model	Rewrite the title as brand + product name + key variant details, pulling from the feed's own attribute columns	half day

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 02

Including GTIN or MPN to improve catalog matching

The lesson notes GTIN or MPN (barcode or manufacturer part number) 'boosts eligibility' by letting Google match products to its structured catalog data.

Which rows are missing a GTIN/MPN value, and does that correlate with lower impressions?

Google Sheets— Same export, 'gtin' and 'mpn' columns.

Procedure

Filter for rows where both gtin and mpn are blank
Cross-reference against the Merchant Center diagnostics export for any 'limited performance' warnings on those SKUs

Sample output

SKU        GTIN        MPN         Merchant Center Flag
LK-2291    (blank)     (blank)     Limited performance: missing identifiers
LK-2292    8901030...  RB3025      None

Healthy

Every SKU has a GTIN or MPN populated, and Merchant Center shows no 'missing identifiers' warnings.

Unhealthy

Blank GTIN/MPN rows carry a 'limited performance' flag in Merchant Center diagnostics, meaning Google is capping their eligibility.

What this means

Without a GTIN or MPN, Google can't confidently match the product to its catalog data, which throttles how often it's shown even if the title is decent.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
GTIN and MPN both blank with a Merchant Center 'limited performance' flag	Pull GTINs from the manufacturer or supplier record and add them to the feed	dev ticket

EitherYou or a developer can handle this, depending on your access.

Final deliverable

A prioritized list of SKUs to fix, split into 'rewrite title' and 'add GTIN/MPN,' ranked by estimated impression uplift.

See a reference example

Sample output

Warby Parker, Feed Audit (excerpt)

REWRITE TITLE (est. highest impact)
1. WP-1104: 'Glasses Blue' -> 'Warby Parker Percey Eyeglasses Blue Crystal Size 50'

ADD GTIN/MPN
2. WP-1104: no manufacturer part number on file, request from supplier

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Correctly identifies generic titles missing brand/model as the primary traffic blocker
Correctly flags GTIN/MPN gaps and connects them to Merchant Center's own diagnostic flag
Orders fixes by estimated impact, not by feed row order