Listing Groups

Listing groups are how you subdivide the products in a Shopping or Performance Max campaign so you can include, exclude, or bid on specific slices of your catalog.

You rarely want to treat every product the same. Listing groups let you carve the catalog by category, brand, condition, or individual item ID, then decide what happens to each slice. You might exclude a low-margin line entirely, push more budget behind your bestsellers, or split new products away from clearance so they do not compete for the same spend.

You should think of listing groups as the Shopping equivalent of ad groups. They are the structure that gives you control, and without them a campaign just spreads spend across whatever the algorithm favors. When a set of products deserves different treatment, a well-defined listing group is how you enforce it instead of hoping the system reads your mind.

Keep it clean. A messy or lazy structure means you cannot control which products get spend, so keep the divisions meaningful and tied to how your products actually differ, not split for the sake of splitting. Ten thoughtful groups beat a hundred random ones.

Structure is control; skip it and the catalog spends itself.