BlinkTank: Shopify announces the end of smart and manual collections
For as long as we have worked on large-catalogue Shopify stores, collections have been one of the most important levers we have. How a catalogue is grouped, filtered and structured decides what customers find, how a store performs in search, and how much manual work it takes to keep the whole thing coherent. It is a large part of what we do all day. Shopify has now announced a rebuild of how collections work, which its own merchandising team calls the biggest change to the Collections API in years.
Also in this issue: a Google Ads bidding change with an August deadline, new reporting in Search Console for your social and video platforms, Shopify pulling all vapes in the US, and a new partner earning model that ties agency payouts to merchant GMV.
On to the news!
Shopify announces end of smart and manual collections
Shopify announced the change on 17 June, the same day as the Summer Everywhere Edition, releasing it first as a developer preview in API version 2026-07. The split between smart and manual collections is going away.
In its place every collection becomes one or more sources: typed sets of inclusion and exclusion conditions, manual picks, or membership pulled from other collections. A single collection can combine rules and hand-picked products, exclude products with their own conditions rather than fighting the tag system, and pull in subcollections that stay current on their own. This kind of flexibility is something that brands have been calling for for years.
There is also variant-level targeting. A collection of green items, for example, can show only the green variant of each product on the collection page and in filters, while the product page still shows every colour. Again, this has been a major pain point for some time.
This is all a preview, not something live in most admins today. Shopify says the redesigned merchant admin experience follows in the coming weeks, and some details are still open, including how variant-level collections will be exposed on the storefront through Liquid, which had no changes at the time of writing.
What this all means is a change to how catalogue structure gets built and maintained. A source-based model with real exclusions and self-maintaining subcollections is closer to how a large catalogue should have worked all along. We have spent years building customisations to get around the limitations of Shopify's collection structure, and a lot of that work should become unnecessary. That is welcome, but it also means a period of adjustment - unpicking those workarounds and rebuilding on the new model will take time and care rather than a single switch.
There is also a catch. A source-based collection is only as good as the product data feeding it, so the stores that have done the attribute work will get far more from this than the ones still relying on tags and free text. As ever, the basics matter most of all.
🔗 New Collection model and APIs now available (Shopify)
Google announces a change to target-based bid strategies
From 17 August, Google is changing how target-based bidding behaves on campaigns marked "Limited by budget". Today, a budget-capped campaign using Target CPA or Target ROAS often over-delivers against the number you set. If your Target CPA is 10 and the campaign has been bringing conversions in at 5, that gap has been working in your favour. After 17 August, Google will steer that campaign back towards the 10 you actually entered. The same applies to Target ROAS campaigns running ahead of their goal.
The practical effect is that campaigns which have been outperforming could see cost per conversion rise or ROAS slip back towards target, without anyone touching a setting. It applies across Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Demand Gen and Travel. Google is not changing your targets or budgets for you, so the campaigns most exposed are the long-running ones where the target was set at launch and never revisited. If your paid team has been enjoying a tCPA that reads better than the number in the account, that is the situation to look at first.
The useful part is that the Bid Target Adjustment Tool went live on 6 July, so there is a runway to act before enforcement. It shows each campaign's history and lets you review and update targets to match the performance you actually want, whether that means locking in current efficiency by lowering the target, or accepting the change and planning to scale into it.
🔗 Changes to target-based bid strategies (Google Ads Help)
Channable benchmark reports rising CPCs and falling ROAS
Virtually every brand we speak to says paid is getting harder, and a new study seems to support this. Channable published its eCommerce Google Ads benchmark this month, drawn from more than 10,000 advertiser accounts across the EU and EEA. Between June 2025 and June 2026, cost per click across Shopping and Performance Max rose 15% year on year. Over the same period average ROAS fell 46% on Performance Max and 43% on Standard Shopping, as higher click costs met falling conversion rates. In short, brands are paying more and getting less back.
There is also a seasonal point. Channable's data has combined-channel CPC at 9.1% higher in Q4 than in Q1, with ad spend up almost 48%.
For large-catalogue stores, this is where product data quality counts. You can’t control the price of a click, but you can control the data behind the products you are bidding on, and a well-structured feed is one of the few things that still improves paid performance when costs are climbing.
🔗 Channable eCommerce Google Ads benchmark
Shopify bans all vape sales in US
Shopify is banning all vape and e-cigarette sales across its US platform, after pressure from a bipartisan coalition of 25 state attorneys general and the City of New York. Reuters first reported it on 23 June. Merchants selling affected products were given until 7 July to remove them or appeal, and the Connecticut attorney general has publicly welcomed the decision. Reporting indicates the ban covers all vapes sold to US shoppers, including the small number that carry FDA authorisation, not only the unlicensed ones the coalition was targeting.
We missed this when it first broke, and want to credit Phil Clark from Say Yes for raising it. The question for us is how long before something similar reaches the UK, if at all. The regulatory pressure here is different, but the pattern is often the same.
For everyone else, this is about platform dependency. A store can be entirely compliant with the law and still lose its entire eCommerce functionality because of a change in policy. We are deeply tied to Shopify ourselves, and this level of dependence is not without risk.
🔗 Shopify to bar vapes as US authorities crack down (Reuters via The Globe and Mail)
Search Console adds reporting for social and video platforms
Google has announced a new type of property in Search Console that reports on how your content performs on social and video platforms. Rather than covering only your own website, the new Platform Properties let you connect key social profiles and see the clicks, impressions and search queries that content picks up in Google Search.
At launch the supported platforms are Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube. It follows the social channels reporting Google added late last year, so this is a build on a direction already under way rather than something completely new.
The reason this matters is that Google has spent the past year pushing more social and video content into the search results, and this is the reporting catching up.
It is early, and how much detail these reports carry in practice is the thing to test once profiles are connected. But the broader point is that Google is telling us fairly plainly where it thinks discovery is heading.
🔗 See how content from social and video platforms performs on Google Search (Google)
Jobs
Hiring:
▸ Lounge is hiring a Senior Product Developer for lingerie and swim, posted by Product Director Emily Blount. Lounge runs on Shopify Plus across eight international stores and is one of the larger UK-born catalogue brands, so the role sits close to the kind of operation this newsletter is written for. The role is product development rather than eCommerce, but the brand and scale are a strong fit if that is your background.
▸ David Austin Roses is hiring a Senior Digital Designer, reporting to its Brand and Ecommerce Director. It runs three international D2C stores plus a B2B site on Shopify Plus, and the role spans web, email and social with a real emphasis on CRO across the three regions. £40,000 to £50,000, hybrid near Albrighton in Shropshire. Apply through the Join Our Team page at davidaustinroses.co.uk.
▸ Tallow + Ash is hiring an Ecommerce Trading Manager, working with the founders on day-to-day trading, launches and CRO. It is a younger, smaller DTC brand (non-toxic laundry products, founded 2023), so a different scale from the others here, but a good one for someone who likes owning trading end to end. Cheltenham, hybrid, salary not stated. Listing on LinkedIn.
Looking for work:
▸ Derek Nicholson is an eCommerce product data specialist with more than seven years across platforms including SAP Commerce Cloud, NetSuite, Salsify, Syndigo and Shopify, and retailers including Amazon, Walmart and Tractor Supply. His background covers content, analysis and syndication, and he has been building a tool that drafts taxonomy structures, meta descriptions and on-page product copy across large datasets. If you work with large catalogues and messy product data, he is well worth a conversation. Based in the US, reachable on LinkedIn or at [email protected].
If you are hiring and the role fits someone with large-catalogue Shopify experience, or you are looking and have that background, send me a message.
Partner shout-out: Trackbee
Trackbee handles server-side tracking and consent for eCommerce stores, which is a crowded space at the moment. What sets it apart is that it is easy to use and robust with it, which is not a combination you get often in this category. If you have questions about the platform, James Pitkin is the person to reach out to.
🔗 trackbee
As ever, thanks for reading.
If you found this useful, I would love it if you could share it with someone you think would find it interesting - whether that is someone managing a large-catalogue Shopify store or anyone else who follows this kind of thing.
See you next week.
Sam
Who am I and what does Blink do?
I'm Sam Wright, Managing Director and co-founder of Blink SEO. We're a search marketing agency that works exclusively with large-catalogue Shopify stores - the kind where the challenge isn't just visibility, but helping customers find the right product in the first place.
We specialise in SEO and PPC for merchants managing hundreds or thousands of products. Most of our work starts with taxonomy: how a store is structured and categorised, and what that means for organic performance, paid efficiency, and on-site discovery.
If you found this useful and aren't already subscribed, you can sign up at blinkseo.co.uk/blinktank.
If you run a large-catalogue Shopify store and want to talk about organic or paid performance, reply to this email or find me at blinkseo.co.uk.