I've been going through Mystery Science Theater 3000 movies in my Netflix queue lately, so the B-horror show is on my mind. What, for a PPCer, is more horrific than doing a lot of work on something and missing one tiny little thing that will change the outcome of all that hard work (ok, possibly losing conversion tracking the Thursday before Black Friday, but I digress)?

If you've spent any time with Google Shopping, you've probably familiarized yourself with some of the basic best practices. In fact, you've probably even experimented with various strategies targeting specific products or product groups.  

Great deal!

However, did you know you could be putting mounds of work into creating a massive account-wide, product-targeted Google Shopping strategy and still be showing all your account products in every ad group to any random person who searches for something remotely related to your products?

Horror of horrors! How, you may ask, is this possible?  Unfortunately, it's a super-easy mistake to make and one not intensely intuitive.Here are two ways this one checkbox can mess up your entire Google Shopping Strategy.

The Inclusion of the Frightful All Products Row

1. Go nuts on your Google Shopping strategy focused on specific products or groups (if you want more advice on this, see my blogpost here for some account strategy tips: Revealed: My Go-To Google Shopping Campaign Strategy).
2. After you create the targeted Ad Group, find the row that says "Everything else in 'All products'."
3. Click on the Max CPC number in that row and select "Excluded".

That's all there is to it, but since it's not terribly obvious, I thought it worth a separate blogpost to point out. Let's be honest, if you're looking through your SQR's wondering what the heck is with all these crazy broad terms to your tightly grouped ad group, it could be that you haven't excluded that row.  Bummer, but do it and move forward.

The Terror of the Bulk Max CPC Edit

One last thing, this is something that has bitten me personally so I feel the pain.If you go to bulk edit all your Max CPCs in a Google Shopping ad group, make sure to uncheck the "Everything else in 'All products'" row!!  

As soon as you set a CPC for that, you will start showing all your products too all your friendly Google searchers all over again.  I wish there was a way to delete this row, but none so far :(Hope this proved helpful and saves at least some of you from wasteful spend!  Have you made this mistake? Do your friends and followers a favor by tweeting this post and saving them the heartache!

Is This One Checkbox Killing Your Google Shopping Strategy? http://t.co/GfC05tPRKe #PPCHorror #PPCChat pic.twitter.com/CJ1yJcSXSs

— Kirk Williams (@PPCKirk) July 23, 2014