I recently removed several hundred products from my catalog (out of several thousand). Very shortly thereafter my Google Shopping campaign started slowing substantially, and has ultimately now come very close to a complete stop. I've talked with (3) different Google Ads support reps but none of them can figure out why the campaign stopped running. Other then the products being removed from my catalog, I haven't made any changes to the ad campaign itself.

All of the recently removed products are now showing in my GMC account under the "needs attention" tab. After doing some research I learned that removing a substantial amount of products from your site can result in ad campaigns slowing and/or even stopping altogether. I can only assume that my Shopping campaign has now come to a very slow crawl is due to the removal of these products, BUT I am still not complete sure. This campaign has been my #1 driver of conversions, so I cannot afford to have it stay down.

I am wondering if anyone has had any similar issues? I am also wondering if I should now go to each one of these products in my GMC account and delete them, and if so would that help?

How do you feed your products to Google?
Do you use the feed generator from Mike Beebe perhaps?
If so, have you sent over a new feed?

Thanks,
David

Hi Dave!

Thanks for your reply. I do use Mike's feed. I've sent over (2) new files since the removal of the products but as of this morning the removed products are (still) showing under my "needs attention" tab in my GMC acct. I should reiterate, when I say "removed", what I did was remove them from being displayed i.e. Unchecking the Sell button and the Display button. I contacted GMC a few days ago, but as everyone who's contacted GMC in the past support knows, it takes several days to receive a response, if a response is received at all.

I am not positive that the removal of the (approximately 275) products is what made my shopping campaign slow to a mere crawl, but that is the only change that I've made to anything "on or around" the campaign in the past several months.

The DLSS Google Merchant Product Feed has kept me up and running for the past several years, and I certainly wouldn't be in business without it. It is the #1 asset to my business.

I am wondering is there any way to remove products from my feed that are not being displayed on my site? These are products that have the Sell button and Display button unchecked in my product admin.

Basically, I have several thousand products that have the Sell button and Display button unchecked in admin, but they are still being added to my product feed when uploading to my GMC account. I don't want to delete these products from my site altogether but I would like to have them removed from my product feed if possible. I'm wondering if this do-able?

If the display box is unticked, that product should not be added to the feed.
Have you downloaded the feed to check for yourself?

Thanks,
David

You emailed me yesterday and I did respond. Did you not receive it?



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Thanks Dave, and Mike!

I didn't receive your email Mike, but I normally post my questions here as well, just in case someone else has the same question at some point in the future. For me, it's the first place I go to look for answers.

After I removed the (aforementioned) products and re-uploaded my feed, all of the "removed" products are now showing in my GMC account under the "Needs Attention" tab. I contacted GMC support and they told me that the products were uploaded and included in my feed. But - they must be looking at a past feed because I am not finding the removed products in my (new) xml file. It does appear that the removed products are not attached to my feed, so I think I'm good on that. I just don't know why they are still showing under the Needs Attention tab.

I am still a bit perplexed by GMC. Several years ago I had a total 15,800 products. After slowly removing all of the non-converting products, my total is now about 7,700. However, my GMC account shows a total of 15,800 products with 8,000 "not showing". Do you happen to know why this is? And, is this a bad thing, or it it just normal?

Just to follow up on this, in case anyone else has a similar issue at some point.

After speaking with GMC support, the products that I had removed from my Feed are still showing in my Merchant Center account partly due to the "Found by Google" attribute (Google had previously "found" these products on my site via a web crawl so that is why some of them are still showing), and also per GMC support "Even after you remove products from your website or feeds, they may still appear in the Merchant Center for up to 30 days until their internal expiration date passes"

I guess the takeaway here is that even after you remove products from your website, and from your product feed, they will still show in your Merchant Center account for approximately 30 days, unless you delete each one individually directly in your GMC account. The issue that I was having is the previously removed products were affecting the "health" of my Google Ads campaign. Google Ads is suggesting that I "fix" these products and "make sure all products are approved in your merchant center account", and causing my optimization score to drop by several points.