Google CSS
Comparison Shopping Services
BiddingLab was one of the first Google CSS partners and offers the CSS service for all European countries, including Switzerland. We manage more than 3 million products in over 25 countries. If you use BiddingLab, the CSS service is included for free.
What is CSS?
CSS stands for Comparison Shopping Services and affects your Google Shopping ads. Before CSS, the search results page was used exclusively for Google’s own offer and price comparators were placed at the back. The European Commission recognised this as unfair competition, which was stopped by a ruling in 2017.
The system thus had to be redesigned and Google itself henceforth offered itself as a price comparator with the name Google Shopping Europe (GSE) and opened the ad platform for shopping ads to external price comparison sites, the so-called Google CSS partners.
Since then, Google ads are no longer preferred, but compete with other price comparison sites in the bidding auction. However, in order to be EU-compliant, Google retains around 20% of the surrendered MaxCPC as a margin. CSS partners, on the other hand, are not bound to this margin, but are treated equally digitally in the bidding auction.
This means a cost saving of up to 20% for you if you choose a Google CSS partner.
What do I have to do to become part of BiddingLab CSS?
Not much, because we take over! We only need your Merchant Center ID(s) to be included in our system.
There are then two inclusion types available here: Association or Sub-account.
Subaccount (recommended)
You can be invited to our BiddingLab MCA as a sub-account. Our CSS specialists will then automatically have access to your account and you will benefit from our regular routine checks and we will inform you if we notice anything negative.
Association (no support possible)
With this option, your account remains completely independent and only the CSS association is assigned to our system.
This means that we will not have access to your account. You will only benefit from the CPC advantage.
Your advantages with BiddingLab CSS
- You save the 20% margin of your advertising budget to Google
- You benefit from up to 20% lower click prices
- Your ad gets more visibility and reaches more customers
- No effort for the transition, everything remains the same for you
- Exclusive participation in Google Betas thanks to CSS Premium Partner Status
- No hidden additional costs
Here is the procedure
Step 1
Tell us your Google Merchant Center ID(s) and the names and positions of the respective Google Merchant Center Admins. And select an inclusion type for each ID.
The background to this additional information is the necessary authorization, which we have to pass on to Google. Otherwise, this data does not play any further role.
Step 2
We create the necessary applications for you at Google. Google will then contact us within the next 24-48 hours and let us know whether the process can be initiated or whether further measures are necessary. Usually everything runs without any difficulties and if there are any, we will support you.
Step 3
Once the integration process has been initiated by Google, you will receive a confirmation from us. Please note that this process does not happen suddenly and can take up to 24 hours. During this time you will be able to see “from Google” and “from BiddingLab” among your shopping ads.
Google also strongly recommends to check the user management after the integration.
However, please note that the quality of your feeds is not automatically improved by a CSS partner and you should continue to make sure that your feeds are maintained regularly for optimal performance.