Product families
Merchants often list what’s really one product as several separate Shopify products, “Snowboard: Hydrogen,” “Snowboard: Oxygen,” “Snowboard: Liquid.” Shopify treats these as unrelated, and so do ad platforms: each one builds up its own ad history and its own review cycle from scratch.
Google, Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest have a fix for this: a shared item group ID. When several listings carry the same one, the platform treats them as variants of one product and consolidates their performance history. Máximo calls a set of products linked this way a product family. Everything else about each product (its own title, price, images, and tracking) stays exactly as it was.
Families affect Google, Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest. Klaviyo is left out deliberately, since Klaviyo catalogs key on individual product identity.
How a family gets created
Section titled “How a family gets created”- Máximo suggests it and applies it automatically, when it’s confident enough (see below).
- Máximo suggests it and you accept it in the review queue.
- You group the products yourself from the product list.
However it’s created, the change takes effect at the next catalog sync to each destination.
How Máximo finds candidates
Section titled “How Máximo finds candidates”Máximo compares a compact profile of every product (title, vendor, product type) and clusters the ones that look alike, only ever comparing products from the same vendor and product type. If your products already carry a metafield that explicitly lists sibling products, Máximo trusts that list directly as your own grouping decision. Otherwise, each candidate cluster is checked against a strict set of rules: a family needs at least two members, free-gift twins are never grouped with the product they come with, and test or sample products are never grouped with real ones.
| Confidence | What happens |
|---|---|
| Below 0.6 | Dropped: you never see it |
| 0.6–0.92 | Proposed: appears in the review queue for you to accept or reject |
| 0.92 and above | Auto-applied: live in your feeds from the next sync |
A high-confidence suggestion is still held for your approval instead of applying automatically when it touches products you’ve already made a grouping decision about, when it’s part of an unusually large batch of changes, or when automatic apply is switched off for your store.
Reviewing proposals
Section titled “Reviewing proposals”Open Products → Review and switch to the Variant groups tab. Each proposed family shows its members, Máximo’s reasoning, and its confidence. Group as one product family applies it; Keep separate dismisses it for good. Applied families are listed separately, each with an Ungroup action.
Grouping products yourself
Section titled “Grouping products yourself”Select the products in your product list, open bulk edit, and check Group as variants. This applies immediately (no review step, since it’s your own call) and the first product you selected becomes the family’s canonical listing.
Ungrouping
Section titled “Ungrouping”Ungroup a single family from the review queue’s Applied families list, or select products in the product list and check Ungroup product families in bulk edit to release every applied family the selection touches. Either way, members return to their own individual item group IDs at the next sync, and Máximo won’t suggest that exact family again.
What changes, and what doesn’t
Section titled “What changes, and what doesn’t”Grouping only changes the item group ID sent to Google, Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest. It never changes offer IDs, prices, titles, images, availability, or how clicks and conversions are attributed; those stay tied to the individual product, exactly as before.