Google Shopping Annotations: Price Drop, Sale & Optimization Guide

If you are running an eCommerce/WooCommerce store and aren’t aware of Google Shopping and product feed marketing, you are missing out on a world of opportunities.

• 76% of all eCommerce industry search ad spend goes toward shopping ads, indicating high levels of interest in the category and a significant investment of ad dollars by major brands.
• Google Shopping receives an average of 1.2 billion searches per month.
• At present, 85.3% of all clicks from Adwords and Google Shopping campaigns come from shopping ads.

Product feed marketing and promoting products on Google Shopping are effective ways to reach your audience and grow your eCommerce business.

This article, as the title suggests, is about Google Shopping annotations.

However, to understand the term better, you must first understand the complete process of promoting your products on Google Shopping.

Therefore, in this comprehensive guide, we will cover the following topics –

• What is Google Shopping?
• How do you list and promote products on Google Shopping?
• What is product feed marketing?
• What are Google Shopping Ad Extensions, Annotations & Labels?
• How to apply Google Shopping annotations

✅ If you already use Google Shopping product feed and Google Shopping and only want to learn about Google Shopping Annotations, you can jump directly to that section using our table of contents scroller.

So, without further ado, let’s begin.

What are Google Shopping Ad Extensions, Annotations & Labels?

Let’s first find out what a Google Shopping ad or list contains.

As you can see, a Google Shopping ad contains a title, image, price, and brand or store name. When you create a product feed for your Google Shopping ad or listing, Google fetches these data from the feed file and displays them in search results.

However, with millions of competitors, you would always want to stand out from the rest. That’s what Google Shopping annotations, ad extensions, and labels can do for you.

Google Shopping Ad extensions, annotations, and labels are extra pieces of information that show up on Google Shopping ads in addition to the title, price, image, and store name. These extra pieces of information can help your ads stand out in the crowded SERP space and get shoppers to click on your ads instead of your competitors.

You can add additional information to your Google Shopping Ads, such as special offers, price drop annotations, shipping labels, customer reviews and ratings, local inventory ads, sales annotations, and return policies.

If we talk about Google Shopping annotations, in particular, Google Shopping annotations are labels or tags that provide additional information about your products in Google Shopping ads. These annotations appear as text overlays on your product images, highlighting specific details or features to attract the attention of potential customers.

Annotations can include information such as “Price Drop,” “Percent off,” “Free Shipping,” or “Sale.” These labels help shoppers quickly identify key attributes of your products and make more informed purchasing decisions.

By utilizing Google Shopping annotations, you can make your ads more engaging and stand out from competitors, ultimately increasing the likelihood of attracting clicks and conversions.

List of Google Shopping Annotations

Category	Title	Short description
Product-specific annotations	Sale price	Allows you to set a sale price for potential customers to view how much they’ll save
	Promotion	Allows you to set special offers for your product (for example: free shipping, 20% off)
	Product ratings	Shows aggregated reviews for your products in the form of a 1 to 5-star rating
	Other product attributes	Describes the main characteristics of your product (for example: material, size)
Merchant badges	Trusted store badge	Displays a “Trusted store” badge to improve user confidence in buying from you
	Business identity attributes	Tells customers about the identity of your business
Shipping and fulfillment annotations	Shipping speed	Calculates the delivery time based on the customer’s location on eligible ads and free listings
	Return policy	Helps customers review the return time frames and other return related annotations on your listings (for example: 30 day return policy, free returns)
	Minimum order value	Allows you to indicate a minimum purchase amount before you’ll provide shipping (either at an additional cost or for free)
	Free and fast shipping	Allows you to showcase products that can be shipped fast/for free
	Estimated delivery date	Calculates the overall delivery time which includes cut-off time, handling time and transit time
Automatic annotations (no additional data required)	Currency conversion	Automatically converts the price of the product based on the user’s country.
	Price drop	Displays a new price alongside the original price of the product for customers to view the price difference
Local products annotations	Local promotions	Shows store-specific promotions using the information already updated for your local inventory ads
	Regional availability and pricing	Provides product availability and variable pricing based on the location of the user
	Pickup today and curbside pickup	Indicates that an option to pick up the product at a local store nearby exists
	Pickup later	Indicates that an option to pick up a product at a local store nearby within a specific SLA (service-level agreement) exists
	On display to order	Indicates that an option to back-order a product that is not available for immediate purchase exists

How to add Google Shopping annotations in your ad or listing

We already know you need a product feed to upload and list your WooCommerce products on Google Shopping. You also need this feed file to run shopping ads as well.

If you want to add additional information to your ads, such as Google Shopping annotations, you must also add them in the feed file under specific attributes. In the following sections, we will talk about different Google Shopping annotations and how you can add them to your listing/ad feed.

Sale Price

Sale price Google shopping annotation is visible at the top of the ad. You will see a Sale tag or label at the top of the ad.

Also, it displays the sale price in green color, and the regular price is displayed in strikethrough font. You shouldn’t just update the discounted price in your feed; rather, put it separately.

This way of displaying discounts has a significant psychological impact on the customers. They are triggered to click or purchase when they see a discount.

How to add Google shopping Sale Price annotation in your feed

CTX Feed can not only automatically populate necessary attributes, but you can also add as many attributes as you may need. It has also integrated all Google Shopping annotations inside its attribute library.

If you have products that are on sale in your WooCommerce store, CTX Feed will automatically include those data in your feed. The plugin already knows that the attribute Google requires for this annotation is sale_price.

If you go back to that Google shopping feed you created earlier, you will notice that Google Shopping annotations like Sale Price already exist in the list.

In case you ever want to add it manually, then click on the Add New Attribute button and select the appropriate attribute from the list.

Here’s how your feed will look after adding the sale price.

Now your Google Shopping ad or free listing will include a Sale tag.

Free or Fast shipping Google Shopping annotations

You can display a free shipping tag along with the delivery time in your listing or ads.

Why would you need to display such Google Shopping Annotations?

• If offered free shipping, 90% of consumers would make more use of online shopping.
• If an item comes with free shipping, 73% more people will choose to buy it.

You can also display fast delivery times in your ads. For example, Free 3-Day.

How to add free or fast shipping on a feed

If you offer free shipping on any product in your Woo store, CTX Feed will automatically include that information in the feed. In case you want to add it manually, look for the attribute – shipping and select shipping (Google Format) as the value.

To display the delivery time, use the attribute transit_time_label.

Return policy annotation

A Return and Refund policy will encourage customers to shop at your store and to have confidence in your brand. It is even possible to put it to use as a marketing strategy in order to bring in more customers and boost your sales.

To enable the return policy on your Google Shopping ads, go to Merchant Center. The jump to Shipping and returns > Return policies > Add Policy.

Here you can pick a suggested policy or make your own, complete with details like the number of days a customer has to complete the returns and the types of products to which it applies (new or used).

How to add return policy Google shopping annotations in your feed

Besides enabling the settings in your GMC account, you must also include the information in your feed file. For this, you need to insert the attribute – return_policy_label.

Google Shopping Price Drop annotation

This is one of the automatic Google Shopping annotations.

Annotations indicating a “price drop” help customers recognize when a product has been discounted. Customers who search Google for your products will notice a “Price drop” badge next to relevant results.

If you lower the price of your product below its historical average, Google may highlight this fact with a “Price drop” badge. Badges indicating a “price drop” are intended to be displayed only when a substantial decrease has occurred in a previously stable price.

As you can see in the image above, the previous is displayed as – Was $261. The retailer has lowered the price significantly. That’s why Google is displaying the Price Drop badge.

You won’t need to include any attributes in your feed for this badge. Google automatically decides where to show this.

Promotion Google Shopping annotations

You can display a specific percentage off, free/discounted shipping, or ‘Special offer’ badges in your ads. These are promotion annotations.

Google supports the following Google Shopping annotations for promotion-

• Discounts: Buy one get one free, a percentage off, cash back, and buy one get two percent off are all examples of discounts.
• Free gifts: Offers of a free product or gift card worth a certain amount
• Shipping: No Charge or Reduced Rate

How to add promotion Google Shopping annotations in your feed

We have already seen how to add shipping information to the feed. For discounts, you can use the attribute- percent_off.

You can also add dynamic discounts in your WooCommerce Google Shopping feed using CTX Feed.

Product ratings

Product ratings on Google Shopping ads and free product listings provide an opportunity for businesses to showcase aggregated reviews and ratings to customers.

The Product rating annotation appears as 1 to 5-star ratings alongside the total number of reviews for a particular product. These ratings are shown in both ads and free product listings on Google Shopping.

The number of stars shows the overall rating for a product. This rating comes from many different sources, such as merchants, review aggregators, review sites, and Google users. This makes sure that the product’s performance is judged completely and fairly.

To participate in the Product Ratings program, businesses must have at least 50 reviews across all their products. These reviews can be submitted to Google through supported reviews aggregators or directly by the business itself.

Product ratings help customers in their product research and purchasing decisions, attracting more qualified customers to product pages. They provide valuable insights into the quality and reputation of products.

How to add product ratings to your feed

Adding product ratings to your Google Shopping listings can help build trust with potential customers and improve engagement. To include ratings, you need to submit a product review and rating feed through your Merchant Center account.

If your WooCommerce store already collects customer reviews, you can create a separate review feed file using that data and upload it to the Merchant Center.

Tools like CTX Feed allow you to generate this feed by using a Google Product Review Feed template, which follows the required format.

If you’re unsure about the process, you can refer to a step-by-step guide on how to generate a Google product review feed for Google Shopping to better understand the setup and submission.

Product Highlights on Google Shopping

Product highlights are another valuable Google Shopping annotation that allows you to showcase the key features and selling points of your products directly in your listings. These appear as short, scannable bullet points beneath your product information.

Product highlights help shoppers quickly understand what makes your product special without clicking through to your landing page. For example, if you’re selling a laptop, your product highlights might include details like “16GB RAM,” “512GB SSD,” or “15-hour battery life.”

How to Add Product Highlights to Your Feed

To add product highlights, use the product_highlight attribute in your feed file. You can include up to 10 highlights per product. In CTX Feed, search for the product highlight attribute and map it to the relevant product data from your WooCommerce store.

Keep your highlights concise (up to 150 characters each) and focus on the features that differentiate your product from competitors.

Trusted store badge

This is another automatic annotation Google decides for you.

The Trusted Store badge is part of Google’s Shopping experience scorecard program. When participating in Buy on Google or free listings in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, merchants have the opportunity to earn the Trusted Store badge.

Here’s what a trusted badge looks like on a listing –

It signifies that your store provides a reliable and trusted shopping experience to potential customers.

To be eligible for the Trusted Store badge, you need to meet certain criteria and provide an excellent customer experience across multiple metrics measured by the Shopping experience scorecard program.

Google automatically monitors your performance in various areas, such as average delivery time, average shipping cost, average return window, average return cost, and seller rating. Your performance is evaluated against other merchants, and you receive ratings of “Excellent,” “Comparable,” or “Opportunity” for each metric.

Once you meet a certain performance threshold in the required metrics, you may receive the Trusted Store badge. Earning the badge indicates that you have consistently provided a high-quality shopping experience to your customers.

The Trusted Store badge can lead to several benefits, including prominence in placements on the Shopping tab. It helps your store stand out, gain visibility, and potentially attract more customers.

Google Shopping Experience Scorecard: How to Earn the Trusted Store Badge

To be eligible for the Trusted Store badge, you need to meet certain criteria and provide an excellent customer experience across multiple metrics measured by the Google Shopping experience scorecard program.

Google automatically monitors your performance in various areas, such as average delivery time, average shipping cost, average return window, average return cost, and seller rating. Your performance is evaluated against other merchants, and you receive ratings of “Excellent,” “Comparable,” or “Opportunity” for each metric.

The Shopping experience scorecard evaluates your store holistically. Here are the key metrics Google tracks:

• Shipping speed: How quickly orders are delivered compared to other merchants
• Shipping cost: Whether your shipping rates are competitive
• Return window: How generous your return policy is (longer windows score better)
• Return cost: Whether you offer free returns or low-cost returns
• Seller rating: Your overall customer satisfaction based on reviews and feedback

Once you meet a certain performance threshold in the required metrics, you may receive the Trusted Store badge. Earning the badge indicates that you have consistently provided a high-quality shopping experience to your customers. Products with eligible badges, including the Trusted Store badge, tend to receive higher visibility and click-through rates.

The Trusted Store badge can lead to several benefits, including prominence in placements on the Shopping tab. It helps your store stand out, gain visibility, and potentially attract more customers.

Business identity Google Shopping annotations

This one is only for US-based stores.

Business identity attributes allow businesses based in the United States to share information about their identity with customers on the “Search,” “Maps,” and “Shopping” tabs. These attributes help customers understand the identity of your business and make informed decisions when shopping.

Here are the available options –

• Asian-owned
• Black-owned
• Latino-owned
• Veteran-owned
• Women-owned

By selecting an attribute, your business will be identified with a small icon on your product description pages (PDP) on the “Shopping” tab. Customers can also use these attributes to filter businesses.

When you choose an identity attribute, you may also opt for promotions that highlight businesses with specific attributes. This means your business and products could be featured on Google pages that showcase businesses with the selected identity attributes.

To set up your business identity attributes, sign in to your Merchant Center account and navigate to the “Business information” page. From there, go to the “About your business” tab and scroll down to the “Business identity attributes” section.

You can toggle the attributes on or off based on your business’s identity. Remember, toggling an attribute on publicly states that someone of the selected identity owns your business.

Minimum order value

The minimum order value is an important part of your shipping settings because it lets you tell customers how much they have to buy before you’ll ship their orders. This rule makes sure that customers spend at least a certain amount, like $30, before you ship their products and fill their orders. By setting a minimum order value, you can control shipping costs and ensure that sending products to your customers makes good business sense.

When configuring your shipping settings, it’s essential to consider the minimum order value if you have a threshold that customers must meet to be eligible for shipping. If any of your products are priced below the minimum order value, customers will not be able to purchase those products individually. This helps prevent customers from placing orders that do not meet the minimum requirement.

It’s important to remember that you should only add the minimum order value if you don’t offer shipping for orders under that amount. You don’t need to set a minimum order value if you offer free shipping on orders over a certain amount and charge for shipping on orders under that amount.

By specifying the minimum order value in your shipping settings, customers will see this information on your ads or free product listings. This transparency helps customers understand any shipping restrictions before they visit your website, which can save you from paying for clicks from individuals who are not intending to make additional purchases.

How to add minimum order value Google shopping annotations in your feed

You can search and find the minimum_purchase_amount attribute in CTX Feed to insert minimum order value data in your feed.

Estimated delivery time

Estimated delivery time is a crucial piece of information for customers when they are considering a purchase. It provides them with an idea of how long it will take for their order to arrive.

In Google Shopping, the estimated delivery time can be displayed as an annotation in your free listings and Shopping ads, helping customers make informed decisions.

To calculate the estimated delivery time, you need to consider three factors: cut-off time, handling time, and transit time. The cut-off time is the time by which a customer needs to place their order for it to be processed on the same day.

If an order is placed after the cut-off time, it will begin processing on the following business day. The handling time refers to the number of business days required to process an order before it is shipped.

Finally, the transit time is the number of business days it takes for the carrier to deliver the package once it is picked up.

How to add estimated delivery time data in your feed

As you know by now, you will need to include handling time and transit time. You can find the necessary attributes under Tax & Shipping.

Currency conversion Google shopping annotations

Another of the automatic Google shopping annotations.

Converting currency allows you to sell your goods in more countries. If you ship products internationally but don’t have separate product pages for each country’s currency, this could be a huge help.

All Merchant Center accounts incorporate an integral currency converter. To have the tool estimate the currency conversion in the ads, you need only submit the products and prices you use on your WooCommerce website.

You need to submit those data in your feed file.

Regional availability and pricing

Regional availability and pricing is a feature available for products advertised through Shopping ads on Google Search and listed in free listings on the Shopping tab. It lets businesses choose where their products are sold and set different prices for each area.

How to setup regional availability and pricing Google shopping annotations

To add regional availability and pricing to your Google Shopping listings, you need to follow these steps:

Set up regions in your Merchant Center account:

• Sign in to your Merchant Center account.
• Click on “Products” in the navigation menu.
• Select “Feeds” and then click on “Supplemental feeds.”
• Choose “Add product inventory feed” and select “Regional inventory” as the feed type.
• Configure your feed using the required attributes, including ID [id] (offer ID) and region ID [region_id] (the value you define for the region).

Adjust your landing pages to accept the region ID parameter:

• Edit your landing page URLs provided in the “link” and “mobile_link” attributes of your primary feed.
• Add the “region_id” parameter to the URLs, using the value specified for the region.
• Ensure that your landing pages can accept the region ID parameter and display the corresponding price and availability.

Update your primary and regional feeds:

a. Update your primary feed:

For all products, set the “availability” attribute to “in_stock” and set the national pricing (price shown on the landing page for customers coming from Display ads).

b. Update your regional feed:

For regionally available products, set the “availability” attribute to “out_of_stock” for regions where the product isn’t offered online.

For regionally priced products, set the “price” attribute. Optionally, set the “sale_price” and “sale_price_effective_date” attributes for regional promotions.

You can find all these attributes in CTX Feed and easily include this annotation in your feed file.

Google Shopping Custom Labels: Organize and Optimize Your Campaigns

While annotations and badges appear on the front end of your ads, Google Shopping custom labels work behind the scenes to help you organize and segment your product campaigns more effectively.

Custom labels in Google Shopping allow you to tag your products with specific attributes that aren’t part of the standard feed specification. You can use up to five custom labels (custom_label_0 through custom_label_4) to categorize products by criteria like profit margin, seasonality, best sellers, clearance items, or any other business logic you want.

Why Use Custom Labels in Google Shopping?

Custom labels give you granular control over your Google Shopping campaigns. For example, you can create separate bidding strategies for high-margin products vs. low-margin products, or allocate more budget to your best-selling items during peak season.

Here are some common ways to use Google Shopping custom labels:

• By profit margin: Label products as “high-margin,” “medium-margin,” or “low-margin” to adjust bids accordingly.
• By seasonality: Tag seasonal items so you can increase bids during relevant periods and pause them off-season.
• By performance: Label your top sellers differently from slow movers to allocate budget more effectively.
• By price range: Segment products by price tier for different bidding strategies.
• By clearance status: Tag clearance items to run specific promotions or adjust bids.

How to Add Custom Labels Using CTX Feed

In CTX Feed, you’ll find the custom_label_0 through custom_label_4 attributes available in the attribute library. You can map these to existing WooCommerce data (like product tags or categories) or set custom values based on your business logic.

Custom labels combined with Google Shopping annotations create a powerful system: labels help you control your campaign structure and bidding, while annotations help your ads attract more clicks from shoppers.

Benefits of Google Shopping annotations

Using Google Shopping annotations offers several benefits for your product ads:

Increased visibility

Annotations make your ads more eye-catching and distinguishable among competitors. As a result, this will increase the likelihood of attracting clicks from potential customers.

Improved click-through rate (CTR)

Google Shopping annotations provide additional information that can entice users to click on your ads. This will lead to a higher CTR and potentially more conversions.

Enhanced product differentiation

Annotations provide an opportunity to highlight the unique features or attributes of your products, effectively setting them apart from similar offerings. This differentiation makes your products more appealing to shoppers, increasing their likelihood of choosing your products over others.

Increased trust and credibility

Annotations like “Best Seller” or “Top Rated” can instill confidence in potential buyers as they see that your products have gained recognition or positive feedback from other customers.

Quick decision-making

Annotations allow shoppers to grasp key information about your products quickly. It enables them to make faster purchasing decisions without extensive research.

Improved ad relevancy

By using annotations that match what people are looking for or what they like, you can make sure that your ads are relevant to their needs and wants. This makes it much more likely that qualified leads who are really interested in your products will find you, which improves the overall effectiveness of your advertising.

Better ad performance tracking

Annotations can be used as useful performance indicators to help you figure out how well different labels work with your audience.

By looking at engagement metrics like click-through rates or conversions for certain annotations, you can figure out which labels have the most impact and make decisions based on data to improve your ad campaigns in the future.

Customization and flexibility

You can customize Google Shopping annotations to match your brand’s messaging and marketing strategies. This allows you to adapt them to different promotions or campaigns.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Wrap up

Google Shopping annotations are a great way to enhance your Google Shopping ad/listings. They make your ads more appealing and engaging.

From sale price annotations to price drop badges, free shipping labels to the Trusted Store badge, each annotation type serves a unique purpose in making your products stand out on the Shopping tab and across Google’s network.

Combined with Google Shopping custom labels for campaign organization and a properly optimized product feed, these annotations can help you maximize the impact of your product ads, drive more targeted traffic, and ultimately increase the chances of converting potential customers into buyers.

I hope this article on Google shopping annotations was of help to you. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions or suggestions.