You're running Google Shopping campaigns, tracking ROAS and conversions, but are you paying attention to impression share? This often-overlooked metric reveals how much of the available market you're actually capturing—and more importantly, how much you're missing.
Low impression share means potential customers are searching for your products and seeing your competitors instead. This guide explains what impression share metrics mean, how to interpret them, and seven proven strategies to increase your Shopping visibility. For product-level impression share analysis, see our dedicated guide.
What is Impression Share in Google Shopping?
Impression share measures the percentage of impressions your ads received compared to the total number of impressions you were eligible for. It's calculated as:
Impression Share = Impressions Received / Total Eligible Impressions × 100
Example: If there were 10,000 searches where your products were eligible to show, and you received 4,500 impressions, your impression share is 45%.
"Eligible impressions" are determined by your targeting settings, approval status, and quality. Google estimates how many times your ad could have shown based on factors including:
- Search queries matching your product feed
- Geographic targeting settings
- Product approval status
- Time of day and day of week
- Device targeting
Key Insight
Impression share tells you how much of your potential market you're reaching. A 45% impression share means 55% of people searching for products like yours are seeing competitors instead of you.
Understanding the Different Impression Share Metrics
Google Ads provides several impression share metrics for Shopping campaigns. Understanding each one helps you diagnose visibility issues.
Search Impression Share
The percentage of impressions you received on the Search Network (which includes Shopping) out of the total you were eligible to receive. This is your primary visibility metric.
| Impression Share | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| 80-100% | Excellent visibility; capturing most of the market |
| 60-80% | Good visibility; room for growth |
| 40-60% | Moderate visibility; significant opportunity missed |
| Below 40% | Low visibility; competitors dominating |
These thresholds vary by industry and competition level. See our impression share benchmarks by industry for more specific guidance.
Search Lost IS (Budget)
The percentage of impressions you missed because your campaign budget was too low. When your daily budget is exhausted, your ads stop showing for the rest of the day.
What high Lost IS (Budget) tells you:
- Your budget is limiting your reach
- You could get more impressions by increasing budget
- Your ads aren't running all day or on all devices
Search Lost IS (Rank)
The percentage of impressions you missed due to Ad Rank. Ad Rank is determined by your bid amount and quality factors (feed quality, landing page experience, expected CTR).
What high Lost IS (Rank) tells you:
- Your bids are too low to win auctions
- Your feed quality may be poor (affecting quality score)
- Competitors are outbidding or outperforming you
Budget vs Rank: Which to Fix First?
Generally, fix rank issues before budget issues. If your rank is poor, increasing budget just means paying more for the same (or worse) positions. Improve Ad Rank first through better bids or feed quality, then increase budget to scale.
Search Top Impression Share
The percentage of your impressions that appeared in the top positions (above organic search results) compared to the total top impressions you were eligible for.
Top positions typically get higher CTRs. Low top impression share means even when you do show, you're often in lower positions.
Search Absolute Top Impression Share
The percentage of your impressions that appeared in the very first position. This is the most prominent Shopping spot and commands the highest CTR.
Why Impression Share Matters for Shopping Campaigns
1. Revenue Opportunity
Every impression you miss is a potential sale going to a competitor. If your conversion rate is 2% and average order value is $100, then:
- 1,000 missed impressions ≈ 20 missed clicks (at 2% CTR) ≈ 0.4 missed conversions ≈ $40 lost revenue
- 10,000 missed impressions ≈ $400 lost revenue
- 100,000 missed impressions ≈ $4,000 lost revenue
Scale this across your product catalog and the revenue impact becomes significant.
2. Competitive Intelligence
Impression share shows you how you stack up against competitors. If your impression share is declining while spend stays constant, competitors are likely increasing their aggression in your market. Use auction insights alongside impression share to understand who you're competing against.
3. Budget Efficiency Insights
The budget vs. rank split tells you exactly where your money should go:
- High Lost IS (Budget): You have room to profitably spend more
- High Lost IS (Rank): Spending more won't help until you improve quality or bids
- Both low: You're capturing most available impressions efficiently
4. Product Prioritization
Impression share varies by product. Your top-selling products should have high impression share to maximize revenue. Lower-priority products can accept lower impression share to conserve budget.
How to Check Impression Share in Google Ads
Impression share metrics aren't visible by default. Here's how to add them:
- Go to your Shopping campaign in Google Ads
- Click the Columns icon (three vertical lines)
- Select Modify columns
- Expand Competitive metrics
- Add these columns:
- Search impr. share
- Search lost IS (budget)
- Search lost IS (rank)
- Search top IS
- Search abs. top IS
- Click Apply
You can view these metrics at the campaign, ad group, or product group level. For product-level impression share, you'll need to check the Products tab or use reporting tools.
Note on Data Availability
Impression share data requires sufficient volume to calculate. Very low-volume products or narrow date ranges may show "--" instead of a percentage. Use longer date ranges (14-30 days) for more reliable impression share data. Note: Performance Max campaigns do not report impression share metrics.
7 Strategies to Increase Google Shopping Impression Share
1. Increase Bids on High-Value Products
The most direct way to improve impression share (especially Lost IS due to Rank) is to increase your bids. As WordStream's impression share guide also recommends, higher bids improve your Ad Rank and win more auctions.
How to do it strategically:
- Identify products with strong ROAS but low impression share—these deserve higher bids
- Use bid simulators to estimate the impression impact of bid increases
- Start with 15-25% bid increases and monitor results for a week
- Don't increase bids on products that are already unprofitable
Best for: When Lost IS (Rank) is high and you have margin headroom.
2. Increase Campaign Budget
If you're losing impressions to budget, the fix is straightforward: increase your daily budget. For a comprehensive approach to distributing spend across products, see our budget allocation guide.
Considerations:
- Check that budget increases are profitable - review your bidding strategy to ensure ROAS targets are met before scaling
- Consider reallocating budget from underperforming campaigns rather than adding new budget
- Monitor for the first few days—sometimes budget increases reveal bid or quality issues
Best for: When Lost IS (Budget) is high and your ROAS is above target.
3. Improve Product Feed Quality
Feed quality affects your Ad Rank (and therefore impression share) in ways that aren't immediately obvious. Following Google's product data specification ensures better matching, higher quality scores, and more competitive auctions.
Feed improvements that impact impression share:
| Attribute | Why It Matters |
|---|---|
| GTIN | Enables Google to match your products to more queries |
| Product Title | Primary signal for query matching; better titles = more eligible impressions |
| Product Type | Helps Google categorize and match appropriately |
| High-quality Images | Better images improve expected CTR, boosting Ad Rank |
| Complete Attributes | Color, size, material help match specific searches |
Best for: When Lost IS (Rank) is high but you don't want to raise bids further.
4. Optimize Product Titles for Searchability
Your product title determines which searches you're eligible for. Weak titles mean fewer eligible impressions (a smaller pool), which limits your maximum impression share. See our product title optimization guide for detailed best practices.
Title optimization formula:
Brand + Product Type + Key Attributes (Color, Size, Material) + Model
Examples:
- Before: "Running Shoes"
- After: "Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 40 Men's Running Shoes - Black/White - Size 10"
- Before: "Coffee Maker"
- After: "Breville Precision Brewer 12-Cup Drip Coffee Maker - Stainless Steel"
Best for: Products with low eligible impression volume despite adequate budget and bids.
5. Add Negative Keywords Strategically
Wait—negative keywords reduce impressions, don't they? Yes, but strategically used, they improve impression share by removing irrelevant auctions where you'd lose anyway.
How this works:
- Your impression share is calculated based on auctions where you're "eligible"
- If you're showing for irrelevant queries (and losing those auctions due to low CTR), it hurts your quality score
- Excluding irrelevant queries improves your quality score on relevant queries, improving Ad Rank
- The result: higher impression share on queries that actually matter
Review your search terms report and add negatives for:
- Queries that get impressions but very low CTR (indicates poor match)
- Queries for products you don't sell or are out of stock - reducing wasted spend on irrelevant clicks
- Queries with clear non-purchase intent (reviews, comparisons, DIY)
Best for: Improving quality-based impression share on relevant queries.
6. Segment Campaigns by Priority
Not all products should have the same impression share target. Create campaign segments with different budgets and bids based on product importance.
Example structure:
| Campaign | Products | IS Target | Budget |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hero Products | Top 20% by revenue | 70-90% | 50% of total |
| Core Products | Middle 60% | 40-60% | 40% of total |
| Long Tail | Bottom 20% | 20-40% | 10% of total |
This ensures your best products get maximum visibility while long-tail products still participate without draining budget.
Best for: Large catalogs where uniform impression share isn't realistic or desirable.
7. Expand Targeting (Carefully)
Sometimes low impression share comes from overly narrow targeting. Review your settings to ensure you're not artificially limiting your reach.
Check these settings:
- Geographic targeting: Are you targeting all regions you can serve?
- Device targeting: Are mobile or tablet bid adjustments limiting impressions?
- Ad schedule: Are you running ads during all hours when customers search?
- Inventory filters: Are campaign filters excluding products unnecessarily?
Caution: Expanding targeting increases eligible impressions. If budget stays constant, your impression share percentage might initially drop even as absolute impressions increase. Monitor total impressions and conversions, not just impression share percentage.
Monitoring Impression Share Over Time
Impression share isn't a set-it-and-forget-it metric. Market conditions, competitor behavior, and seasonality all affect it. You can also use Target Impression Share bidding to automate maintaining a specific visibility level.
Weekly Monitoring Checklist
- Check campaign-level impression share trends—is it stable, rising, or falling?
- Review Lost IS (Budget) vs Lost IS (Rank) split—has the balance changed?
- Identify products with suddenly declining impression share
- Compare impression share to conversion performance—are they correlated?
What to Watch For
| Signal | Likely Cause | Action |
|---|---|---|
| IS dropping, Lost IS (Rank) rising | Competitors increasing bids | Increase bids or improve quality |
| IS dropping, Lost IS (Budget) rising | Search volume increasing / CPCs rising | Increase budget or reduce waste |
| IS stable but conversions dropping | Quality of traffic declining | Review search terms, add negatives |
| Top IS much lower than overall IS | Winning auctions but in low positions | Increase bids to reach top positions |
Analyzing Impression Share by Product
Aggregate campaign-level impression share hides important product-level variation. Some products may have 80% impression share while others have 10%.
How to segment:
- Export product-level data including impression share metrics
- Categorize products by impression share tier (high/medium/low)
- Cross-reference with ROAS to prioritize action
| ROAS | Impression Share | Priority | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | Low | Highest | Increase bids/budget immediately |
| High | High | Maintain | Protect position; monitor competitors |
| Low | High | Medium | Reduce bids; reallocate budget |
| Low | Low | Low | Review product viability; consider pausing |
Tools like SKU Analyzer can surface product-level impression share alongside ROAS, making it easy to identify which products need more visibility investment and which are overspending relative to returns.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is impression share in Google Shopping?
Impression share is the percentage of impressions your ads received compared to the total number of impressions you were eligible to receive. For example, if there were 1,000 searches where your product could have shown and you received 400 impressions, your impression share is 40%. It measures how much of the available market you're capturing.
What is a good impression share for Google Shopping?
A "good" impression share depends on your goals and competition level. For top-performing products where you want maximum visibility, aim for 70-90%. For average products, 40-60% is typical. For long-tail products with lower priority, 20-40% may be acceptable. Very few advertisers achieve 100% impression share due to competition.
What is the difference between impression share lost to budget vs rank?
Lost impression share (Budget) means your budget ran out before you could show for all eligible auctions—fix by increasing budget. Lost impression share (Rank) means your Ad Rank (combination of bid and quality) wasn't high enough to win auctions—fix by increasing bids or improving feed quality. These two metrics add up to explain all your missed impressions.
How do I check impression share in Google Ads?
In Google Ads, go to your Shopping campaign, click "Columns", then "Modify columns". Under "Competitive metrics", add: Search impression share, Search lost IS (budget), Search lost IS (rank), Search top impression share, and Search abs. top impression share. These columns will show your visibility metrics at the campaign, ad group, or product group level.
Does impression share affect Google Shopping performance?
Yes, directly. Low impression share means you're missing potential customers who are actively searching for your products. Every missed impression is a missed opportunity for a click and potential conversion. However, the goal isn't always maximum impression share—it's profitable impression share at an acceptable cost.
Conclusion
Impression share is one of the most actionable metrics in Google Shopping. Unlike ROAS or conversion rate (which depend on many factors beyond your control), impression share responds directly to your decisions about bids, budgets, and feed quality.
Key takeaways:
- Understand your lost impressions: Budget vs. Rank tells you exactly where to focus
- Prioritize high-value products: Not everything needs maximum impression share
- Improve quality, not just bids: Feed optimization is often more cost-effective than bid increases
- Monitor trends: Declining impression share is an early warning of competitive pressure
- Think holistically: Impression share is a means to conversions, not an end in itself
Start by checking your current impression share metrics. Identify products with strong performance but low visibility—these are your biggest opportunities. Then work through the strategies in this guide to systematically capture more of the market that's already searching for your products.