Google Shopping vs Performance Max for Indian Shopify Stores: Setup, Targeting and Controls

Should you start with Standard Shopping or Performance Max?#

Start with Standard Shopping. It reports a slightly higher ROAS, brings more new customers and lets you bid and report by product. Add Performance Max when you want reach beyond Shopping ads, with brand exclusions switched on.

These benchmarks come from ProfitBox360 research, 2025 (client data and shopper surveys).

Other Performance Max benchmarks for Indian brands:

• Performance Max takes 55% of Indian D2C brands' Google Ads spend on average.
• Shopping placements take 62.5% of Performance Max spend in Indian Shopify stores. The rest goes to other channels, such as YouTube and Display.
• Brand-name searches make up 34% of Performance Max conversions in stores without brand exclusions, and 8.3% in stores with them.

Across Search and Shopping campaigns together, Indian D2C brands see an average Google Ads-reported ROAS of 4.5x. These Google figures count orders when they're placed, before RTO and returns, so they aren't profit.

What the gap means in rupees#

Illustrative example: the same budget in each campaign type.

• ₹1,00,000 a month goes into each campaign, and each earns its benchmark ROAS
• The average order is ₹1,000 (62.5% COD orders at ₹850 and 37.5% prepaid orders at ₹1,250)
• New and returning customers spend the same per order

• Standard Shopping: ₹4,40,000 × 68.5% = ₹3,01,400, or 3.01x on ₹1,00,000
• Performance Max: ₹4,30,000 × 64% = ₹2,75,200, or 2.75x on ₹1,00,000
• Difference: ₹3,01,400 − ₹2,75,200 = ₹26,200 more new-customer revenue from Standard Shopping

Performance Max still has a place. It reaches YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps, which Standard Shopping can't. And the two campaign types can now run on the same products without Performance Max winning by default.

How do you set up Google Shopping on Shopify?#

Install the Google & YouTube app in Shopify, connect a Merchant Center account, add Indian shipping costs and a return policy, then link Google Ads. The app is built by Google and is free to install. Ad spend is billed to your Google Ads account.

Get the store ready#

Shopify sets these requirements before the channel will work:

• The store can't be in private mode, so remove any storefront password.
• A valid payment provider is set up in Shopify.
• A Refund Policy and Terms of Service are added and linked in the footer menu.
• At least one contact method is shown: address, phone number, email or contact form.
• You ship to a supported country and sell in its currency. India with the Indian Rupee qualifies.

Connect the app and Merchant Center#

1. In Shopify admin, go to Sales channels and install Google & YouTube from the Shopify App Store.
2. Click Connect Google Account and choose the Google account that will own Merchant Center.
3. Select an existing Merchant Center account, or click Create new. Verify it with your phone number and the 6-digit code.
4. Under Countries and Languages, set India as the target market and INR as the currency.
5. Choose Automatically import shipping settings to copy your Shopify rates, or Manually set up shipping settings in Google Merchant Center.
6. Wait for the first product sync. It can take up to 24 hours, and later changes usually sync within a few hours.

Google dropped the "Next" from Merchant Center Next in July 2026. The tool is now simply called Merchant Center.

Set shipping and returns for India#

Add shipping costs, because Google requires them for Shopping ads and free listings in India. To set them by hand, go to Products & store, then Shipping and returns. Open the Shipping policies tab and click Add shipping policy.

• Enter handling time, transit time and the order cut-off time.
• Add a free-shipping threshold if you offer one.
• Use up to 20 shipping policies per country.
• Set delivery areas by state or by postal code, so pin-code zones can carry their own rates and delivery times.
• Keep costs as close as possible to what shoppers see at checkout. If you can't match them exactly, overestimate.

For returns, open the Return policies tab under Shipping and returns and click Add return policy. Enter the return window in days and the return cost: no cost, a fixed cost or a percentage of the price. Then add the return method and any restocking fee.

Keep the return policy the same as the one on your website. Google checks return policies before using them, and a review can take up to 10 business days.

If products are disapproved or the account is flagged for misrepresentation, fix that first. It's a separate process with its own steps.

Link Google Ads#

In the app, find the Google Ads card on the Overview page, select Get Started, then Connect, and choose your Google Ads account. You need admin access and valid billing in Google Ads.

You can also link from Merchant Center. In its settings, open Apps and services, click Add service and choose Google Ads. Then approve the request in Google Ads: go to Tools, then Data manager, then Google Merchant Center, select Manage & link and open the Received tab.

Campaigns created inside the app are Performance Max campaigns. Build Standard Shopping campaigns in Google Ads. Before either campaign bids, check that Google Ads counts each purchase once.

How do targeting and auction priority differ?#

Standard Shopping shows only Shopping ads, chosen from your product data, with bids you can set by product group. Performance Max uses the same product data plus your images, videos and text to show ads across Google's channels, and it sets bids for you. When both carry the same product, Ad Rank decides which one serves.

Both campaign types match ads to searches using your Merchant Center product data, not keywords. So the titles, product types and descriptions in your Shopify products decide which searches you can appear for.

Which campaign serves when both carry a product?#

The one with the higher Ad Rank. Since 23 October 2024, Performance Max no longer automatically takes priority over Standard Shopping when both are in the same account and target the same products. Before that, Performance Max always won.

• Standard Shopping's Low, Medium and High campaign priority only decides between Standard Shopping campaigns.
• A Search campaign keyword that exactly matches the search, or its spell-corrected form, is preferred over Performance Max. An exact-match brand Search campaign keeps exact brand searches out of Performance Max. Brand exclusions catch the variations.
• To compare the two fairly, run Google's Standard Shopping vs Performance Max experiment rather than switching one off and guessing.

What can you see in each campaign's reports?#

Standard Shopping reports search terms and results for each product. Performance Max now also has a full search terms report, plus a channel performance report that splits results by where ads ran.

Read the channel performance report#

In Google Ads, go to Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Channel performance. It shows cost, conversions and conversion value for Google Search, the Display Network, YouTube, Discover, Maps, Gmail and search partners. A segment for ads using product data shows what your Shopping placements did.

• Data is available for any date range after 6 June 2025. Google announced the report on 30 April 2025 and opened a beta after Google Marketing Live in May 2025.
• Google later added ROI columns, a cost toggle, downloads and segments.
• You can't set a budget for each channel. Performance Max still moves money between channels itself.

Illustrative example: a store's Google Ads budget.

• The store spends ₹2,00,000 a month on Google Ads
• Performance Max gets the benchmark 55% of it
• Shopping placements get the benchmark 62.5% of Performance Max spend

So ₹41,250 a month of Performance Max budget goes somewhere other than Shopping ads. Check what it returns in the channel report. If those channels take far more than 37.5% and bring little conversion value, move budget to Standard Shopping, which spends only on Shopping placements.

Check search terms#

Open the Search terms report under Campaigns and choose Search terms and landing pages for Performance Max from the drop-down. Google began rolling out this full report in April 2025, on top of the older search terms insights.

• Data goes back to March 2023.
• The Ad format segment separates Shopping ads from text ads.
• You can add a search term as a negative keyword straight from the report, at campaign or account level.

How much of Performance Max ROAS comes from brand searches?#

About a third, if you don't exclude your brand. In Indian stores without brand exclusions, 34% of Performance Max conversions come from brand-name searches. In stores with them, it's 8.3%.

People who type your brand name already know you. Many would reach you through a brand Search ad or a free search result anyway. When Performance Max claims those orders, its ROAS looks better than the new demand it creates.

Illustrative example: how much of a 4.3x is brand.

• ₹1,00,000 a month of Performance Max spend at the benchmark 4.3x, so ₹4,30,000 of reported conversion value
• Both cases report the same 4.3x, to show the brand effect alone
• Brand-search orders have the same average value as other orders
• Brand clicks cost too little to matter, so all ₹1,00,000 is set against non-brand sales

• No exclusions: ₹4,30,000 × 34% = ₹1,46,200 from brand searches, and ₹2,83,800 ÷ ₹1,00,000 = 2.84x
• With exclusions: ₹4,30,000 × 8.3% = ₹35,690 from brand searches, and ₹3,94,310 ÷ ₹1,00,000 = 3.94x

The same 4.3x on the dashboard can mean 2.84x or 3.94x from shoppers who didn't search for you. To find your own share, filter the Performance Max search terms report for your brand name. Then compare its conversions with the campaign total.

Standard Shopping also shows ads on brand searches unless you add your brand as a negative keyword. Compare both campaign types on non-brand searches before moving budget between them.

Which brand and negative keyword controls does Performance Max have?#

It has four: brand exclusions, campaign-level negative keywords (up to 10,000 per campaign), negative keyword lists and account-level negative keywords (up to 1,000). Search themes and the new customer acquisition goal steer it further.

Set up brand exclusions#

Brand exclusions stop a campaign serving on searches for a brand, including common misspellings and subsidiary brands. In Performance Max they cover Search, Shopping and YouTube search inventory.

1. Go to Campaigns, open the Settings tab and select the Performance Max campaign.
2. Click Additional settings, then Brand exclusions.
3. Choose a brand list, or click + New brand list and add your brand.
4. Decide on the tick box Allow Shopping ads on searches that mention excluded brands.
5. Click Save.

Leave that tick box empty if you want Performance Max's ROAS to show non-brand demand. Tick it only if showing product listings on brand searches matters more than clean reporting. Google announced this Shopping option in January 2025.

• Each campaign takes up to 10 brand lists, and each list holds up to 5,000 brands.
• A brand must be in Google's brand library, and a young D2C brand may not be there yet. If yours is missing, request it, and add your brand name as a negative keyword in the meantime.
• Brand inclusions, which limit a campaign to chosen brands, work in Search campaigns only.

Add negative keywords at three levels#

Use negative keywords for Search and Shopping inventory, the only places they work in Performance Max. For YouTube and Display, use content suitability settings and placement exclusions instead.

• Campaign level: go to Campaigns, then Keywords, open the Negative keywords tab, click the plus button and select the Performance Max campaign. These began rolling out to all advertisers in January 2025. On 9 April 2025, Google raised the limit from 100 to 10,000 per campaign.
• Lists: since August 2025, you can apply negative keyword lists to Performance Max campaigns. An account can hold 20 lists of up to 5,000 keywords each.
• Account level: go to Admin, then Account settings, and expand Negative keywords. The limit is 1,000, and they apply to Search, Performance Max, Shopping and other campaign types.

Preview a negative before you add it. Google shows the expected loss of conversions or conversion value for up to 10 keywords at a time.

Put terms no campaign should ever buy at account level, such as "jobs", "franchise" or "dealership". Keep terms that suit one campaign but not another at campaign level.

Guide reach with search themes#

Add up to 50 search themes per asset group. Google raised the limit from 25 in August 2025.

Search themes are signals, not strict targeting. They add to the searches Performance Max finds by itself. They get the same priority as phrase and broad match keywords in Search campaigns, so an exact-match Search keyword still wins. Negative keywords and brand exclusions still apply to them.

Bid for new customers#

Switch on the new customer acquisition goal in either campaign type. It works in Search, Performance Max, Shopping and Demand Gen campaigns. Its modes include:

• Bid higher for new customers: Google values a new customer's order more than a returning one.
• Only bid for new customers: Google avoids bidding on people it knows have bought.
• High-value new customers: Google looks for new buyers who resemble your best existing ones.

Most modes need a purchase conversion goal. Google spots existing customers in three ways: a Customer Match list you upload, a new-customer value in your conversion tag, and its own detection from up to 540 days of purchases. Google suggests customer lists of at least 1,000 members.

Since 2025, Performance Max also lets you choose which devices to target and exclude age groups.

FAQ#

Can you stop Performance Max spending on YouTube or Display?#

No. Performance Max has no setting to switch off a channel or cap its budget. The channel performance report in Google Ads shows each channel's cost and conversion value. If YouTube or Display spend returns little, exclude poor placements and content, or move that budget to a Standard Shopping campaign, which spends only on Shopping ads.

Do Performance Max negative keywords block YouTube and Display ads?#

No. Google applies Performance Max negative keywords to Search and Shopping inventory only, whether they're added at campaign, list or account level. To keep ads away from unsuitable YouTube videos, apps or websites, use content suitability settings and placement exclusions in Google Ads. Brand exclusions also reach YouTube search results, but not other YouTube placements.

How does Google decide who counts as an existing customer?#

Google Ads uses three sources for the new customer acquisition goal. They're a Customer Match list the brand uploads, a new-customer value sent with each purchase conversion, and Google's own detection from up to 540 days of tracked purchases. Google suggests uploading a list of at least 1,000 customers for a reliable split.

Do products need a Google Ads budget to appear on Google Shopping?#

No. Once the Google & YouTube app syncs products to Merchant Center, they can appear in free listings on Google without any ad spend. India is a supported country for both free listings and Shopping ads. Paid Standard Shopping or Performance Max campaigns add ad placements, and Performance Max adds other Google channels too.

Does a brand exclusion stop the brand's own Search campaign?#

No. A brand exclusion applies only to the Performance Max campaigns it's attached to. A separate Search campaign bidding on the brand name keeps serving, and an exact-match keyword there wins over Performance Max anyway. Running both keeps brand-name searches out of Performance Max's ROAS without losing them.

Did the Merchant Center rename in 2026 change any settings?#

No. In July 2026, Google removed the word "Next" from Merchant Center Next in its interface, emails and help pages. Accounts, product feeds, shipping and return settings, and Google Ads links stayed as they were. Shopify stores using the Google & YouTube app didn't need to reconnect anything.