You can have the best product in your category and still be invisible on Google Shopping. The reason usually isn't your price or your photos — it's your product feed: the structured data file that tells Google what you sell. Get the feed right and you show up. Get it wrong and you don't.
Here's what actually matters.
Titles do the heavy lifting
Google reads your product title like a search query. "Black Hoodie" loses to "Banfana Pullover Hoodie — Heavyweight Brushed Fleece, Unisex." Front-load the details shoppers search for: brand, product type, key attribute, size or material. For a full framework, the Banfana team wrote up a Google Shopping product title testing guide.
Descriptions and attributes build relevance
A thin description is a missed opportunity. Google uses your description and structured attributes — color, size, material, gender, age group, category — to match you to queries and to qualify you for more listing types. Fill them in completely, accurately, and consistently.
Product type and Google category
Mis-categorized products get shown to the wrong people, or not at all. Mapping each product to the correct Google product category is one of the highest-leverage, most-ignored steps in feed optimization.
Structured data on your landing page
Google also crawls the product page itself. Schema.org markup — price, availability, and aggregateRating from reviews — is what earns you rich results, those star ratings under a listing. No markup, no stars.
Approvals: the invisible gate
None of this matters if your products get disapproved. The usual culprits: mismatched prices between feed and page, missing GTINs, or landing pages Google can't crawl. Fix these first; optimization comes after approval.
The takeaway
A great feed is boring, precise work — and it's the difference between existing and being found. Every product in this store's catalog is built to that standard.
Further reading from Banfana: Building custom product feeds · Appearing more in AI Mode & AI Overviews.