Finding comprehensive product performance data for Google Shopping shouldn't require a scavenger hunt across multiple platforms. Yet that's exactly what most e-commerce advertisers face: performance metrics in Google Ads, product details in Merchant Center, and competitive insights scattered somewhere in between.
This guide maps out exactly where to find Google Shopping reporting data, what each platform provides (and what it doesn't), and how to build a unified view that actually supports optimization decisions. For a broader overview of Shopping analytics strategy, see our complete analytics guide.
The Product Performance Data Problem
The fundamental challenge with Google Shopping reporting is fragmentation. The data you need to make informed decisions lives in multiple places, uses different identifiers, and often requires manual work to combine.
Data Lives in Multiple Places
A complete picture of product performance requires data from at least two primary sources:
- Google Ads: Advertising performance (cost, clicks, conversions, revenue)
- Google Merchant Center: Product catalog data, competitive pricing, visibility metrics
Neither platform provides the complete picture. Google Ads doesn't show you product attributes or competitive pricing. Merchant Center doesn't show you advertising costs or ROAS.
Manual Exports and Spreadsheet Chaos
For many advertisers, "reporting" means weekly exports from both platforms, followed by VLOOKUP battles in spreadsheets to match products across systems. This process is:
- Time-consuming: Hours spent on data manipulation instead of analysis
- Error-prone: Product ID mismatches, version control issues, formula errors
- Quickly outdated: By the time you finish, the data is already stale
- Not scalable: Works for 100 products, breaks at 10,000
Time Spent vs Time Analyzing
The Real Cost
Most teams spend 80% of their analytics time gathering and preparing data, and only 20% actually analyzing it and making decisions. Efficient reporting flips this ratio.
Google Ads Reporting for Shopping
Google Ads is your primary source for advertising performance data. Here's where to find Shopping-specific reporting and what each view provides.
Products Tab (Where to Find It, What It Shows)
The Products tab in Google Ads shows performance metrics for individual products in your Shopping campaigns.
How to access: Campaigns → select a Shopping campaign → Products tab
Key metrics available:
- Impressions, clicks, CTR
- Cost and average CPC
- Conversions and conversion rate
- Conversion value (revenue)
- ROAS (if conversion value tracking is set up)
The Products tab is useful for quick product-level checks, but filtering and analysis options are limited compared to custom reports.
Product Groups Report
Product groups are how you organize products within Shopping campaigns for bidding. The Product Groups view shows performance aggregated by your grouping structure.
How to access: Campaign → Ad Groups → Product Groups
This view is valuable for understanding how different segments (by brand, category, custom label) perform, but it shows group-level aggregates, not individual product data.
Predefined Reports (Shopping Section)
Google Ads provides several predefined reports specifically for Shopping:
- Shopping - Product: Product-level performance across all campaigns
- Shopping - Product Type: Performance by Google Product Category
- Shopping - Brand: Performance aggregated by brand
- Shopping - Category: Performance by product category
- Shopping - Item ID: Performance by unique product identifier
How to access: Reports → Predefined Reports → Shopping
Custom Columns for Shopping
You can create custom columns to calculate Shopping-specific metrics:
- True ROAS: Account for returns and actual margin
- Profit per click: (Conv. value - Cost) / Clicks
- Break-even CPC: Based on your target ROAS
Custom columns help you see actionable metrics directly in the interface instead of exporting for calculation.
Limitations (No Merchant Center Data, Attribution Delays)
Google Ads reporting has significant gaps for Shopping advertisers:
- No product attributes: Can't filter by product details (color, size, custom labels) that aren't in your product group structure
- No competitive data: Can't see how your prices compare to competitors
- No inventory visibility: Can't correlate performance with stock levels
- Attribution lag: Conversion data can take up to 7 days to fully populate due to conversion lag
- Limited historical data: Data retention limits vary by report type
Google Merchant Center Reporting
Merchant Center provides product catalog data and competitive intelligence that Google Ads doesn't offer. For a complete walkthrough of what's available, see our dedicated Merchant Center Analytics guide.
Performance Dashboard Overview
The Merchant Center Performance dashboard shows an overview of how your products are performing in free listings and Shopping ads combined.
Key views:
- Clicks and impressions over time
- Top-performing products
- Product status breakdown (approved, disapproved, pending)
Note that this includes both paid Shopping ads and free product listings, which can complicate analysis if you're focused specifically on paid performance.
Product-Level Performance Tab
The Products tab in Merchant Center shows individual product status and basic performance metrics.
Available data:
- Approval status and any issues
- Impressions and clicks (combined paid + free)
- Product details from your feed
This is useful for diagnosing feed issues but lacks the cost and conversion data needed for ROAS analysis.
Competitive Visibility Report
The Competitive Visibility report shows how often your products appear compared to competitors:
- Your visibility: How often your products show in search results
- Competitor visibility: How often competitors appear for the same queries
- Page overlap rate: How often you appear on the same page as specific competitors
This report helps identify where you're losing impression share to competitors.
Price Competitiveness Report
The Price Competitiveness report is one of Merchant Center's most valuable features:
- Benchmark price: What competitors charge for the same or similar products
- Your price: Your current price for each product
- Price difference: Percentage gap between your price and benchmark
- Country-level data: Competitive pricing by market
Why This Matters
Products priced significantly above competitors often underperform in Shopping, regardless of ad quality. The Price Competitiveness report helps you identify pricing issues before they drain your budget.
Best Sellers Report
The Best Sellers report shows trending products in your categories across Google Shopping. Use it to:
- Identify popular products you might want to stock
- Benchmark your catalog against market demand
- Spot emerging trends in your category
Limitations (No Cost/ROAS Data, Different Metrics)
Merchant Center's limitations are essentially the inverse of Google Ads:
- No cost data: Can't see what you're spending on each product
- No conversion value: Can't calculate ROAS
- Combined paid + free data: Hard to isolate paid Shopping performance
- Different metric definitions: Impressions and clicks may differ from Ads reporting
- Limited time ranges: Historical data availability varies by report
The Gap Between Google Ads and Merchant Center
Understanding what each platform provides—and doesn't—is essential for building complete Shopping reporting.
Comparison: What Each Platform Shows
| Data Type | Google Ads | Merchant Center |
|---|---|---|
| Cost/Spend | Yes | No |
| Conversions/Revenue | Yes | No |
| ROAS | Yes | No |
| Product Attributes | Limited | Full |
| Custom Labels | Via product groups | Full |
| Competitive Pricing | No | Yes |
| Competitor Visibility | No | Yes |
| Feed/Product Status | No | Yes |
| Impression Share | Yes | Different metric |
Why You Need Both for the Full Picture
Consider a product with high ad spend but low conversions. In Google Ads, you see the problem. But why is it underperforming? Potential causes visible only in Merchant Center:
- Priced 20% above competitors (Price Competitiveness report)
- Low visibility compared to competitors (Competitive Visibility)
- Missing GTIN causing poor matching (Product status)
- Image quality issues affecting CTR (Feed diagnostics)
Without Merchant Center data, you'd be guessing. Without Ads data, you wouldn't know there was a problem worth investigating.
The Manual Process of Combining Data
Most advertisers combine this data manually:
- Export product performance from Google Ads (CSV)
- Export product catalog from Merchant Center (CSV)
- Export price competitiveness data (CSV)
- Match products across files using offer_id / product_id
- Build formulas to calculate combined metrics
- Repeat weekly (or more frequently)
This works, but it's time-consuming, error-prone, and doesn't scale well as catalogs grow.
Building Custom Reports
If you need to build your own unified reporting, here are the main approaches.
Looker Studio (Pros/Cons)
Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio) is Google's free visualization tool that can connect to both Google Ads and Merchant Center.
Pros:
- Free to use
- Native connectors for Google Ads and Merchant Center
- Real-time data (no manual exports)
- Shareable dashboards
Cons:
- Blending data across sources is complex
- Performance issues with large datasets
- Limited transformation capabilities
- Merchant Center connector has limitations
- Requires ongoing maintenance
Spreadsheet Exports (Manual Process)
The traditional approach: export CSVs and combine in Google Sheets or Excel.
Pros:
- Full control over data and calculations
- No special tools required
- Flexible analysis
Cons:
- Time-consuming manual process
- Data is stale immediately after export
- Error-prone (ID matching, formula errors)
- Doesn't scale with catalog size
- Version control challenges
Scripts and Automation
For technical teams, Google Ads Scripts and API integrations offer automation options.
Google Ads Scripts: Can automate reporting and export data, but don't connect to Merchant Center directly. For programmatic access, the Google Ads API offers more flexibility.
API Integration: Both Google Ads API and Content API for Shopping allow programmatic data access. This requires development resources but enables true automation.
Build vs Buy
Building custom API integrations provides maximum flexibility but requires significant development and maintenance investment. For most teams, purpose-built tools offer better ROI than custom development.
Unified Reporting with SKU Analyzer
SKU Analyzer was built specifically to solve the Shopping reporting fragmentation problem. It connects to both Google Ads and Merchant Center APIs, automatically combining data into a unified product-level view.
How It Combines Both Data Sources
SKU Analyzer pulls data from both platforms and matches products automatically:
- From Google Ads: Daily cost, clicks, impressions, conversions, revenue, ROAS at the product level
- From Merchant Center: Product attributes (title, brand, category, custom labels), pricing, competitive data
- Automatic matching: Products linked via offer_id/product_id across systems
- Historical data: Up to 2 years of performance history
Key Features
Core reporting capabilities include:
- ROAS by SKU: See profitability for every individual product, not just campaign averages
- Price benchmarks: Compare your prices to competitor benchmarks alongside performance data
- Performance tiers: Automatic classification of products as heroes, standard, or zombies based on ROAS
- Wasted spend tracking: Identify products consuming budget without conversions
- Brand performance: Roll-up views by brand with drill-down capability
- Custom label filtering: Filter and analyze by all 5 custom labels
- Trend visualization: Time-series charts for all key metrics
The unified view means you can answer questions like "which high-ROAS products are underpriced?" or "which expensive products have competitive pricing issues?" without switching platforms or building spreadsheets.
Key Metrics to Track Weekly
Regardless of your reporting setup, monitor these metrics on a weekly basis:
Weekly Shopping Reporting Checklist
- Overall ROAS: Is the account hitting profitability targets?
- Cost trend: Spend pacing against budget?
- Revenue trend: Growing, flat, or declining?
- Wasted spend: How much is going to non-converting products?
- Top performers: Are hero products maintaining performance?
- Worst performers: Are zombie products being addressed?
- Price competitiveness: Any significant pricing gaps?
- Impression share: Capturing available demand?
- CPC trends: Any competitive pressure changes?
- New products: How are recently added products performing?
A good reporting system makes this weekly review possible in minutes, not hours.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I find product-level performance data for Google Shopping?
Product-level performance data is found in two places. Google Ads provides cost, clicks, conversions, and ROAS data through the Products tab in Shopping campaigns. Google Merchant Center provides product attributes, competitive pricing data, and visibility reports. For complete product analytics, you need to combine data from both platforms.
What's the difference between Google Ads and Merchant Center reporting?
Google Ads reporting focuses on advertising performance: cost, clicks, impressions, conversions, and revenue. Merchant Center reporting focuses on product data: feed status, competitive pricing, visibility metrics, and best sellers. Google Ads shows what you're spending and earning; Merchant Center shows how your products compare to competitors.
Why is my conversion data different between Google Ads and Google Analytics?
Google Ads and Google Analytics use different attribution models and data collection methods. Google Ads attributes conversions to the ad click date, while Analytics may use different attribution windows. Ads counts conversions based on your conversion settings (e.g., 30-day click window), while Analytics uses its own attribution model. Data processing times also differ, causing temporary discrepancies.
How do I combine Google Ads and Merchant Center data for reporting?
Manual combination requires exporting data from both platforms and matching by product ID (offer_id in Merchant Center, product_id in Google Ads). Use spreadsheets or Looker Studio with both data sources connected. For automated unified reporting, tools like SKU Analyzer connect to both APIs and combine data automatically, matching performance metrics with product attributes and pricing data.
Conclusion
Effective Google Shopping reporting requires data from multiple sources, but it doesn't have to require hours of manual work. Understanding where data lives—and what each platform provides—is the first step toward better reporting.
Key takeaways:
- Google Ads provides performance data (cost, conversions, ROAS) but lacks product attributes and competitive pricing
- Merchant Center provides product data, pricing intelligence, and competitive visibility but lacks cost and ROAS
- Complete reporting requires combining both sources, either manually or through tools that integrate both APIs
- Weekly monitoring of key metrics enables proactive optimization instead of reactive firefighting
The goal is spending less time gathering data and more time acting on insights. Whether through Looker Studio, spreadsheets, or purpose-built tools, investing in better reporting infrastructure pays dividends in optimization efficiency.