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Excluded destination

Excluded destination is a Merchant Center attribute that keeps a product in the feed but out of the places you name, such as Shopping ads or free listings.

How it works

Merchant Center sends products to destinations, which it also calls marketing methods: Shopping ads, Display ads, local inventory ads, free listings, free local listings and a few more. The data source sets the default list. The excluded_destination attribute in the feed takes one product out of the destinations you name, one value per destination.

Its pair, included_destination, adds a destination. When the two conflict, the exclusion wins. Google recommends setting destinations on the data source and using the product attribute for exceptions.

Our guide to excluding products from ads compares this attribute with an exclusion inside a campaign.

Where you see it

  • Merchant Center — a product attribute in the feed; for a whole data source, the marketing methods chosen for it.
  • Google Ads — according to Google, a product excluded from Shopping_ads no longer appears in the product and listing group selectors.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop has 3,000 products. It decides that its 200 paper napkins are not worth paid clicks, so their feed rows get excluded_destination = Shopping_ads. Shopping ads now have 2,800 products to choose from, while free listings still have all 3,000.

Not to be confused with

  • Listing group — a node in the product tree of one asset group or ad group; an exclusion there applies only in that group. Excluded destination is set in Merchant Center and covers the whole destination.
  • Disapproved products — Google’s decision after a policy or data check. An excluded destination is the store’s own choice.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “To stop ads for a product that is in stock, mark it out of stock.” Right: for a product that is still for sale, Google points to excluded_destination. For a break of up to 14 days, the pause attribute stops Shopping, Display and local inventory ads.
  • Wrong: “Excluding Display_ads takes the product out of all remarketing.” Right: Google notes that the product can still appear in dynamic remarketing ads created by Performance Max campaigns.

Sources