Industry · Status at source date: Newsletter archive
Use the popularity_rank attribute instead of dropping out-of-stock products
Ruben Runneboom has shared two feed-management pointers for Google Merchant Centre. He calls the relatively new popularity_rank attribute one of the most interesting Merchant Centre additions in years, since it lets advertisers send Google a much stronger signal about which products matter most.
What changed
He also cautions against a common mistake: removing temporarily unavailable products from the feed entirely, because when the product returns, Google has to rediscover and relearn it, effectively resetting its history rather than pausing it.
Why it matters for advertisers
For you, this means the feed strategy can be sharpened by using popularity_rank to prioritise key products and by keeping temporarily out-of-stock items in the feed rather than deleting them. Worth reviewing how your feed handles unavailable products to preserve their learned performance when they become available again.
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Original newsletter text and archive evidence
Use the popularity_rank attribute instead of dropping out-of-stock products
Ruben Runneboom has shared two feed-management pointers for Google Merchant Centre. He calls the relatively new popularity_rank attribute one of the most interesting Merchant Centre additions in years, since it lets advertisers send Google a much stronger signal about which products matter most.
He also cautions against a common mistake: removing temporarily unavailable products from the feed entirely, because when the product returns, Google has to rediscover and relearn it, effectively resetting its history rather than pausing it.
For you, this means the feed strategy can be sharpened by using popularity_rank to prioritise key products and by keeping temporarily out-of-stock items in the feed rather than deleting them. Worth reviewing how your feed handles unavailable products to preserve their learned performance when they become available again.
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