Banning and Excluding Products

Sembot distinguishes between two independent mechanisms for controlling which products appear in ads. Understanding the difference between them allows you to precisely manage what is visible to potential customers.

Table of Contents

• Difference: excluded (temporary) vs. hidden (permanent)
  • Product visibility (global hiding)
  • Excluded destination (selective exclusion)
• Manual exclusion and automatic rules
  • Manually setting visibility
  • Manually setting destination exclusion
  • Automatic exclusion via rules
• Reviewing excluded products
  • The "Inactive Products" view
  • Filtering by visibility
  • Filtering by excluded destinations
• Restoring a product to ads
  • Restoring a single product
  • Restoring multiple products
  • Impact of manual edits on feed synchronization

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Difference: excluded (temporary) vs. hidden (permanent)

Product visibility (global hiding)

The Visibility field determines whether a product is active in Sembot and whether it is included in the feed sent to Google at all. It operates at the product level — independently of the channel.

Value	Meaning
Visible	The product is active and included in all configured advertising channels.
Visible if present in feed	The product is active only when it comes from the source feed; if the feed does not contain it — it is inactive.
Hidden	The product is globally disabled — it is not included in any channel or feed.

Setting Hidden is the equivalent of permanently disabling a product from ads. It is used, for example, for products discontinued from sale, indefinitely unavailable, or not meeting Google's requirements.

Important: For the "Hidden" setting to actually take effect at the feed level, the "Take product visibility into account" option must be enabled in the feed configuration (Feed → Products tab → checkbox). Without this, products marked as hidden may still be sent to Google.

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Excluded destination (selective exclusion)

The Excluded destination field allows you to disable a product from specific Google advertising channels while keeping it active in others. This is a precise mechanism — the product remains visible in Sembot and in other channels, but does not appear where it has been excluded.

Available destinations:

Destination	Description
Shopping ads	Google Shopping — paid product ads
Display ads	Google Display Network (banners, remarketing)
Local inventory ads	Ads for brick-and-mortar stores
Buy on Google	Purchases completed directly on Google
Free listings	Free results in Google Shopping
Free local listings	Free results for brick-and-mortar stores

A complementary field is Supported destination — which works in reverse. If you fill it in, the product will go only to the specified channels, and will automatically be excluded from all others.

When to use each method:

Situation	Recommendation
Product discontinued from sale	Visibility → Hidden
Product unavailable for an extended period	Visibility → Hidden
Product should not appear in paid ads, but can appear in free listings	Excluded destination → Shopping ads
Product should go to only one specific channel	Supported destination → selected channel
Temporary removal from campaigns while keeping the feed active	Excluded destination → Shopping ads

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Manual exclusion and automatic rules

Manually setting visibility

For a single product — inline editing:

1. Find the product in the table.
2. Click the cell in the Visibility column.
3. Select Hidden from the list.
4. The change is saved automatically. A green triangle will appear in the corner of the cell — this indicates that the value is now manually managed and will not be overwritten by the feed.

For multiple products — bulk action:

1. Select the products to hide (checkboxes in the table).
2. Click Edit selected in the bulk action bar.
3. Column to edit: Visibility.
4. Action type: Replace.
5. Value: Hidden.
6. Click Apply changes.

Manually setting destination exclusion

For a single product:

1. Find the Excluded destination column in the table (if you don't see it, add it via Show columns).
2. Click the cell — a list of channels will appear.
3. Select the channels from which you want to exclude the product.
4. Values are displayed as chips (tags) — each chip can be removed by clicking ×.

For multiple products:

1. Select the products.
2. Click Edit selected.
3. Column: Excluded destination.
4. Select the channels to exclude.
5. Click Apply changes.

Automatic exclusion via rules

Rules allow you to automatically exclude products that meet specific criteria — without manual intervention. In the Rule settings section, there is a template category called Exclusions, containing ready-made exclusion rule templates.

Example use cases:

Condition	Action
Price = 0 or empty	Visibility → Hidden
Availability = Out of stock	Visibility → Hidden
Title contains "outlet"	Excluded destination → Shopping ads
Cost price > Sale price	Visibility → Hidden
No image (thumbnail empty)	Visibility → Hidden

How to create an exclusion rule:

1. Go to Inventory → Rule settings.
2. Click Add rule or select a template from the Exclusions category.
3. Step 1 — set filters: define which products the rule applies to (e.g., Availability = Out of stock).
4. Step 2 — set action: Column: Visibility → Replace → Hidden.
5. Click Save.

The rule will be applied to all products meeting the conditions and will run on every data synchronization.

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Reviewing excluded products

The "Inactive Products" view

Products with Hidden visibility and products absent from the feed can be browsed in the default Inactive Products view — click this tab above the table.

The tab includes products meeting one of the following conditions:

• Visibility = Hidden
• Visibility = Visible if present in feed and the product is not in the feed

Filtering by visibility

To see only products set to Hidden:

1. Click the Filters button.
2. Select the Visibility column.
3. Set the value to: Hidden.
4. The table will show only hidden products.

You can save this view as a new tab (e.g., "Hidden products") — details in the Saving views section.

Filtering by excluded destinations

To find products excluded from a specific channel:

1. Click Filters.
2. Select the Excluded destination column.
3. Set the value to e.g. Shopping ads.
4. The table will show products excluded from that channel.

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Restoring a product to ads

There is no dedicated "Restore" button — restoring a product involves manually changing the field value back to an active state.

Restoring a single product

Changing visibility:

1. Find the product in the Inactive Products tab.
2. Click the cell in the Visibility column.
3. Change the value to Visible (or Visible if present in feed).
4. The change is saved — the product will be included in the feed at the next synchronization.

Removing a destination exclusion:

1. Click the cell in the Excluded destination column.
2. Click × next to the channel chip you want to restore.
3. The change is saved automatically.

Restoring multiple products

1. Go to the Inactive Products tab.
2. Select the products you want to restore.
3. Click Edit selected.
4. Column: Visibility → Replace → Visible.
5. Click Apply changes.

Impact of manual edits on feed synchronization

Every manual visibility change is marked with a green triangle (override). This means the feed will not overwrite this value automatically — the product will remain in the set state even after a feed update.

If you want the product's visibility to be managed by the feed again:

1. Click the green triangle next to the Visibility field.
2. In the "Edit override values" window, select the Visibility field.
3. Click Save — the manual override is removed and the feed takes control of visibility again.