A fellow reader of the list asked:
“I’ve implemented your Gatekeeper architecture for Google Shopping to prevent high spend on irrelevant searches.
I added a few negative keywords to the high-priority campaign, BUT Google is showing search terms in the medium priority campaign that are not negated in the high priority campaign.
How come? Is the campaign prioritization broken?”
No, it’s not broken.
Google still respects campaign priorities in Standard Shopping Campaigns.
But these types of campaign structures, although not hard, can get complex, and it’s easy to miss some things.
What I’ve seen in audits of shopping campaigns is that query segmentation fails mainly due to targeting mismatches and/or budget constraints.
Queries enter the wrong (lower-priority) campaign when the higher-priority campaign cannot “catch” them because of differences in device targeting, locations, schedules, audiences, demographics, languages, networks, IP exclusions, or country-of-sale settings. Inconsistent negative keyword application or incomplete product coverage also breaks the intended priority logic.
Note: Shopping campaign strategies with priorities only work when the different priority campaigns are eligible for the same set of products. Additionally, limited or exhausted budgets cause queries to bypass higher-priority campaigns and spill into lower-priority campaigns, undermining the segmentation strategy.
– Nils
PS: Wednesday is ‘Ask Me Anything’ day. If you’ve got a question to which my answer would benefit a larger part of the community, send it my way, and I’ll try to answer it 🙂