Google Shopping Excluded Destinations: Rules for Smarter Ad Spend

Some products belong in your catalog but don’t justify continued Shopping ad spend. Low returns, thin margins, and missing popular sizes can all make a product a poor candidate for paid promotion.

Google’s excluded_destination attribute lets you keep those products in your feed while controlling where they appear. Setting it to Shopping_ads excludes them from Shopping ads while preserving eligibility for Free Listings, provided they meet Google’s requirements. This setting does not block every form of paid advertising.

Three Rules to Put Excluded Destinations to Work

The attribute identifies the destination to exclude. Your feed management rules determine which products qualify, using advertising performance, cost, or inventory data.

• Strengthen Your ROAS. Identify products that consistently fall below your return on ad spend target. An example rule: “If a product’s ROAS over the past 30 days is below 300% and it meets a defined minimum ad spend requirement, set excluded_destination to Shopping_ads.” The minimum spend requirement helps avoid excluding products before they have enough performance data.
• Safeguard Your Profitability. Use cost of goods sold (COGS) to calculate a product-specific break-even ROAS. A $100 product with $70 in COGS leaves $30 to cover advertising, giving it a break-even ROAS of approximately 333%, before other costs. Include shipping subsidies, transaction fees, and other relevant costs for a more accurate threshold. Example rule: “If a product’s ROAS falls below its break-even threshold over the evaluation period and it meets the minimum spend requirement, set excluded_destination to Shopping_ads.”
• Improve Your User Experience. Avoid paying to send shoppers to styles missing the sizes they’re most likely to buy. Define core sizes for each product group, then apply a group-level rule: “If any designated core size is out of stock, set excluded_destination to Shopping_ads for every variant in that group.” Available variants can remain eligible for Free Listings.

Review exclusions regularly and define when products should become eligible for Shopping ads again. Inventory exclusions can be lifted when core sizes return; performance exclusions need a planned review or retest.

Make Every Ad Dollar Count

Put excluded_destination to work with feed rules that support your ROAS, profitability, and inventory goals. Keeping the right products in Shopping ads helps reduce wasted spend and improve program performance.

Source

• Google Merchant Center excluded destination specification