Custom Labels in Google Merchant Center: How to Use Them

Custom labels are five optional fields in your product feed — custom_label_0 to custom_label_4 — that you fill with your own values. Shoppers never see them. They exist so you can group products in Google Ads in ways the standard attributes cannot, such as by profit margin or season.

Why use custom labels

Standard attributes like brand, category and product type describe what a product is. Custom labels describe how you want to treat it: which products deserve higher budgets, which are on clearance, which sell best in winter. You can then bid, budget and report on those groups.

Popular custom label ideas

• Margin — high-margin, mid-margin, low-margin.
• Price band — under-500, 500-2000, over-2000.
• Season — summer, winter, festive, all-year.
• Performance — bestseller, average, no-sales.
• Promotion — clearance, new-arrival, sale.

Rules to remember

• Each product can have one value per label field.
• Each label field supports a limited number of unique values across your account (Google documents the current limit), so keep values few and simple.
• Keep the same meaning for each field: if custom_label_0 is margin, keep it margin for every product.
• Values are not shown to shoppers, so do not put customer-facing text here.

How to add them

1. Decide what each of the five fields will mean and write it down.
2. Add the columns to your feed. The Merchant Center feed generator lets you include extra columns, or use supplemental feeds or feed rules in Merchant Center.
3. Refresh the feed and check the values in Merchant Center.
4. In Google Ads, subdivide product groups (or create listing groups) by custom label.

Keep them updated

Performance and season labels change. Update them regularly from your sales data, or automate them with feed rules or a spreadsheet that feeds into a supplemental feed.

A worked example

A sports store spent most of its Shopping budget on cheap accessories that sold often but earned little. It added custom_label_0 for margin and custom_label_1 for season, then split its campaign by margin. Higher bids went to high-margin items and lower bids to low-margin accessories. Within two months, profit from Shopping ads improved while total spend stayed the same.

For more on feeds, read Merchant Center feed requirements and product feed optimization for Google Shopping.

A simple label plan to start with

• custom_label_0 — margin: high, mid, low
• custom_label_1 — season: summer, monsoon, winter, festive, all-year
• custom_label_2 — performance: bestseller, steady, slow
• custom_label_3 — promotion: sale, new, clearance, none
• custom_label_4 — spare for future needs, such as supplier or price band

Start with one or two labels and a simple campaign split. Add more only when you have a clear decision you want the label to support.

Related guides

• How to Set Up Shipping in Google Merchant Center
• How to List Your Products on Google Shopping for Free
• How to Create a Google Merchant Center Feed Without a Plugin

More free tools: browse all our free ecommerce tools, no sign-up needed.

Frequently asked questions