If you run a WooCommerce or Shopify shop in Ireland and spend €500 to €5,000 a month on Google Ads, the order you fix things in matters more than any single setting. This is the order we work through a shop's account in, and where the advice is our practice rather than Google's, we say so.
For habits that apply to any account, see our Google Ads tips for small budgets. Every Google help page cited was checked in October 2026.
Tracking with values and consent comes first
Shopping and Performance Max bid on the sales value you report. If that value is wrong, every target you set later is wrong too.
Consent is a requirement in Ireland
Ireland is in the European Economic Area. Google Ads Help on consent mode for EEA traffic says that to keep measurement, ad personalisation and remarketing, advertisers "must collect consent for use of personal data from end users based in the EEA" and "share consent signals with Google", using the ad_user_data and ad_personalization signals. It also warns that blocking Google's tags until someone clicks the banner "may lead to loss in data". When a visitor declines, Google's Tag Manager reference says cookieless pings are still used "for behavioral and conversion modeling, to fill the gaps in your data".
Enhanced conversions
Enhanced conversions hash first-party data such as the customer's email with SHA256 before sending it, and according to Google Ads Help "can improve the accuracy of your conversion measurement and unlock more powerful bidding". The setting alone is not enough: the email or phone number must be on the confirmation page when the tag fires.
Where WooCommerce tracking usually breaks
In our diagnostic work on WooCommerce stores, broken tracking is usually several small faults layered together:
- a consent plugin such as Complianz, CookieYes or Cookiebot with its Consent Mode v2 integration never switched on, or no default consent state set;
- custom code trusting the WP Consent API check wp_has_consent(), which can return "allow" for visitors who declined;
- a thank-you page that reloads and counts an order twice, or several stores in one Ads account with overlapping order numbers;
- purchases imported from GA4 rather than a native Google Ads purchase action, which we prefer for bidding.
In one WooCommerce account in March and April 2026, Google Ads reported €4,277 in sales while WooCommerce showed €9,410 of paid revenue, a tracking rate of 45%. The cause was a consent plugin in opt-in mode with no consent default. That is one account, not a benchmark.
Some gap is normal. Google Ads books a sale on the click date, while GA4 and WooCommerce use the order date, so compare with the "Conversions (by conv. time)" column. In our experience a 20 to 30% gap between Ads and GA4 is common. A much larger gap between Ads and your paid orders is a fault to find.
Merchant Center and the feed
Google builds your Shopping ads from your feed, so the feed sets the ceiling.
GTINs and limited visibility
Merchant Center Help on GTINs says products with missing or incorrect GTINs "may have limited visibility", and if a product has one and you leave it out, "the product could be disapproved". Own-brand and handmade stock usually has no GTIN; submit brand and MPN instead. GTINs also unlock price benchmarks, "the average price that typically leads to more successful ad auctions" for the same product.
Images: 500 by 500 pixels from 31 January 2027
Google's 2026 product data specification update raises the minimum image size to 500 x 500 pixels for all categories from 31 January 2027. Warnings reading "Image too small for upcoming enforcement" began on 14 April 2026, and Google recommends 1500 x 1500 pixels or larger. Its image link page also rules out promotional overlays, watermarks, borders and "Coming soon" placeholders.
Titles
Titles can run to 150 characters, but Merchant Center Help on titles says shoppers usually see the first 70 or so: "Put the most important details first." Lead with brand, product name and the details people filter by, such as size and colour. Leave out price and delivery information.
Free listings and misrepresentation
Ireland is a supported country for free listings, so approved products can appear on the Shopping tab without ad spend, though Merchant Center Help says showing is not guaranteed.
The bigger risk is suspension. Google's misrepresentation policy requires accurate contact details, the total price including taxes and fees, and a return policy you honour; egregious violations suspend an account "upon detection and without prior warning". In our experience the usual causes are a missing address, €0 products, feed prices or stock that differ from the page, and stale schema markup. If a plugin sends your feed, ask whether it has moved to the Merchant API: Google for Developers says the Content API for Shopping reached sunset on 18 August 2026.
Standard Shopping or Performance Max
When two campaigns could serve the same impression, Google Ads Help says Google "prioritizes the campaign with the highest Ad Rank". Since late 2024, according to Google's Ads Liaison as reported in the trade press, Performance Max no longer automatically takes priority over Standard Shopping for the same products.
Our rule of thumb is one Shopping campaign carrying the budget: Standard Shopping plus a tight Search campaign where people search by part number, or a feed-only Performance Max campaign for general ecommerce. We want roughly 30 to 50 conversions a month before relying on Performance Max. Google publishes no official minimum; that figure is ours.
Exclude your own brand
Performance Max can take credit for people already searching for your shop by name. Brand exclusions apply to Search, Shopping and YouTube search inventory. We add one, plus a competitor brand list, to every Performance Max campaign we run.
What you can see, and what stays hidden
Google announced full Performance Max search terms reporting on 30 April 2025 on its Ads and Commerce blog. A channel performance report, announced on 6 November 2025, splits results across Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Maps, Gmail and Search partners. The blind spot is smaller, not gone: Google's search terms page says low-activity terms are left out for privacy.
Set your ROAS target from your margin
Break-even ROAS is 1 divided by gross margin, worked out on the price excluding VAT, with shipping, payment fees and returns counted as costs. As illustrative arithmetic, not a result: a product with a 40% margin breaks even at a ROAS of 2.5, so €100 of ad spend must bring in €250 of sales to stand still.
Check what value your tag sends. If it includes Irish VAT at the 23% standard rate or shipping, your reported ROAS looks better than it is: a break-even of 2.5 on ex-VAT values becomes about 3.1 on VAT-inclusive ones, before any shipping is added.
What Google says about choosing a target
Google Ads Help on Target ROAS for Shopping suggests starting from "the average conversion value divided by cost from the last 4 weeks" and giving the strategy 15 days before judging it. Standard Shopping needs "at least 15 conversions per Merchant Center ID in the last 30 days". Google's learning period page adds that after a change "it can take up to around 50 conversion events or 3 conversion cycles" to adjust. Our practice is to set the target at what the campaign actually delivers and move it in 10% steps, one change every two to three weeks.
The 17 August 2026 change
From 17 August 2026, target ROAS and target CPA campaigns that are limited by budget deliver closer to the target instead of beating it. Google's help page says this covers Search, Shopping and Performance Max among others, and that Google will not adjust your targets or budgets for you. In our experience most shops at this spend are budget-capped, so a target below break-even now means the campaign aims for a loss. Google lists Maximize conversion value as an alternative; we do not use it untargeted on a capped budget by default, as several 2026 agency tests found it underperformed.
Seasonality and the Irish calendar
Smart Bidding already allows for normal seasonal patterns. Google Ads Help says seasonality adjustments are for short events, ideally one to seven days. A Black Friday weekend sale fits; the whole of December does not.
Dates to plan around: Black Friday on 27 November 2026 and Cyber Monday on 30 November; St Stephen's Day sales from 26 December; Valentine's Day on 14 February 2027; Mother's Day in Ireland, unusually early, on 7 March 2027; St Patrick's Day on 17 March; and Father's Day on 20 June 2027. For Christmas, check An Post's published cut-off dates once they appear, and use the new handling_cutoff_time feed attribute to state your dispatch cut-off. Our practice is to raise budgets by no more than 20% at a time and wait one to two weeks.
Mistakes that burn budget
- Judging Performance Max on blended ROAS. Brand searches and returning customers flatter it. We judge on new-customer revenue and MER: total shop revenue divided by total ad spend.
- Cutting products on ad data alone. In one WooCommerce account, €265 of apparently zero-conversion spend sat beside €4,595 of sales in the same category. Check your own orders first.
- Copying a target. A target taken from another shop, not your margin, buys sales you cannot afford.
Account checks for this month
- Needs attention. In Merchant Center, count disapproved and limited products, and look for missing GTIN and image size warnings.
- Feed connection. Ask your feed plugin vendor whether it uses the Merchant API.
- Tracking rate. Compare last month's Ads conversion value, by conversion time, with revenue from paid orders in your shop. A large gap means checking consent first.
- Consent test. In a private window, decline the banner and confirm a denied signal still reaches Google; then accept and confirm it changes to granted.
- Brand exclusion. If a Performance Max campaign has none, your own brand searches are probably inside its ROAS.
- Search terms. Sort the Performance Max search terms report by cost and look for brand and irrelevant terms.
- Channel split. Check how much Performance Max cost went to Search and Shopping compared with Display, YouTube and Discover.
- Budget-limited targets. Compare each budget-limited target ROAS with your break-even ROAS.
- Auto-apply. Turn off any auto-applied recommendation you would not approve by hand.
If you would rather have someone work through these checks with you, our Google Ads management starts with your tracking, your feed and your margins before we change a single bid.
When the checks point back at the shop itself, such as missing contact details, mismatched prices or a slow checkout, our ecommerce website work on WooCommerce and Shopify fixes the store your ads send people to.