About performance reporting for CSS product pages

Use performance reporting for CSS (Comparison Shopping Services) product pages to understand how much engagement they're driving. You can check click and impression metrics for both your product pages and Product Listing Ad (PLA) format.

Review your performance data in CSS Center

You can review performance data for all of your products. Clicks and impressions that your products received will be included in your performance reporting.

Review all data

For a broad look at your data, review the “CSS performance” tab under "CSS product pages".
You can check data for impressions, clicks, and CTR (clickthrough rate). You can also use the marketing source filter to specify the source of traffic for free listings, ads, or both.
You can filter each metric into Title, Brand, or Category by selecting the filter’s name at the top of the dashboard.

Performance data may be limited

If your product listings don’t have enough traffic during a selected time period, you could check limited performance data in your reporting. This situation can also occur when you apply a filter to your data.
When you segment your total performance data by any metric or category, you might notice a difference in the total and the sum of the rows. Some data might not be available for detailed reporting but is still considered in the total sum.

CSS product pages performance troubleshooting

If you don’t find performance reporting for your CSS product pages, it may be because you haven’t opted in to the feature.

Note: You may get impressions and clicks for items that are disapproved for CSS product pages due to insufficient product information. In some instances where it may be beneficial for a potential customer, we try to serve listings for these items.

Best practices for web analytics tools

If you want to track clicks using a third-party or proprietary web analytics tool (for example, Google Analytics), you may do so by implementing the tracking setup on your website or application. Clicks from various CSS Center features will then automatically show in these tools. You may want to verify that the split between Google Ads traffic and free traffic is reported accurately.

Here are a few options:

Option 1: Use link / mobile link URLs and Google Ads auto-tagging

Enable auto-tagging in your Google Ads account or use Google Ads tracking templates with a final URL suffix. This will segment the traffic from Google Ads so that the source is shown as “Google” and the medium as “CPC” in Google Analytics. Learn more about tracking in Google Ads
Use the link [cpp_link] and mobile link [cpp_mobile_link] attributes in your feed. In Google Analytics, traffic from CSS product pages will show “Google” as the source and “Organic” as the medium. Learn more about traffic sources in Google Analytics
- Clicks from CSS Center under CSS product pages reporting are only a portion of your clicks reported by Google Analytics. It's recommended that you verify your analytics tools reporting data with CSS Center performance reporting.

Option 2: Use separate URLs in CSS Center feeds, by using the ads redirect, mobile link, and the Google Search index attributes

Use the ads redirect [ads_redirect] attribute in your product data for landing page URLs intended for Shopping ads. This attribute will override the link [cpp_link] and mobile link [cpp_mobile_link] attributes for Shopping ads traffic. You can use the {ifmobile} ValueTrack parameter in this attribute to provide specific landing pages for mobile ads. Additionally, auto-tagging in your Google Ads account will need to be enabled. Google Ads tracking templates can also be set up.
- An example of using the ads redirect [ads_redirect] attribute with Google Analytics tracking parameters: “https://www.example.com/product123.html?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=cpc”
Use the link [cpp_link] and mobile link [cpp_mobile_link] attributes for landing page URLs intended for free traffic. Traffic from CSS product pages will show in Google Analytics with “Google” as the source and “Organic” as the medium.
- Some CSS product pages traffic can be further segmented in Google Analytics by using parameters in your link and mobile link attributes. It's recommended that you verify your analytics tools reporting data with CSS Center performance reporting as this setup may lead to data discrepancies.
To prevent indexing, add the noindex tag to your pages if appropriate.
- Note: When the pages are reindexed, the tracking parameter from the link attribute should no longer appear in organic search results. It can take days to 3 months for reindexing to occur. Check your crawl rate settings in the web developer console tools to help with reindexing pace.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?