A product feed is a spreadsheet that must satisfy a very particular reader. Google’s Merchant Center checks every product against a specification and against your website, and any product that fails is marked with an issue, shown less or not shown at all. For a store that relies on Google Shopping for traffic, a feed error is a sales leak, and a feed with thousands of errors is a flood. The diagnostics page can look overwhelming, but the issues fall into a small number of families, each with a standard cause and cure.
This guide helps you triage and fix them. It explains how to read the diagnostics, then goes through the five groups of errors and their usual fixes, followed by the matching problems that arise on stores with changing prices and stock, a pre-submit checklist and an approach to monitoring. Merchant Center’s interface, naming and policies change, so confirm the current wording in Google’s help pages, which are linked in the sources. It complements Shopify CSV import errors, because many feed problems start as product-data problems.
How to read the diagnostics
Merchant Center’s diagnostics show issues by severity and by number of affected products. Some issues disapprove products so that they do not appear; others are warnings that limit performance. Open an issue and look at three things: its name, an example product and the exact attribute named. The name tells you the family, the example lets you see the cause in a real record and the attribute points to the field to fix.
| Severity | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Error or disapproval | The product is not eligible to show | Fix first, starting with the largest groups |
| Warning | The product can show but may perform worse | Fix after errors; often improves quality and reach |
| Notification | Information or an optional improvement | Review for easy wins |
Always work from the largest group down. A single missing attribute can affect two thousand products, and fixing it at the source clears them all.
Group 1: missing required attributes
Google requires a core set of attributes for every product, and the exact list depends on the category and the country. Typically these include an identifier, title, description, link, image link, price, availability and condition, with extra attributes such as brand and a product identifier for most products. A missing value is the simplest error and the most common after an import or a theme change.
| Issue wording (typical) | Likely cause | Fix at the source |
|---|---|---|
| Missing value [description] | Empty description field or HTML stripped to nothing | Fill the description in the product record |
| Missing value [image link] | No product image, or the image URL is blank | Add an image to the product |
| Missing value [brand] | Vendor field blank | Fill vendor or brand on every product |
| Missing value [price] | Price blank or zero | Check variants and price rules |
| Missing value [availability] | Inventory tracking set up incorrectly | Check inventory settings and the availability mapping |
These errors come from the product record, so fix them there. Patching the feed output means the next export brings them back. If your store has many products with the same gap, fix the pattern: a rule that fills the brand from the vendor field, or a required-field check in your product-upload process. A tidy upload path, as in bulk product upload, prevents the whole class.
Group 2: invalid values and identifiers
A value can exist and still be wrong. The most common case is the product identifier. Google expects a valid global trade item number, such as a GTIN, for products that have one, and a manufacturer part number plus brand where they exist. Invented or placeholder numbers cause disapprovals and can harm the account.
- Invalid GTIN. The number fails the check-digit test, has the wrong length or is a placeholder. Use the barcode printed on the product or the manufacturer’s data.
- Wrong identifier type. A SKU entered as a GTIN. Keep identifiers in the right fields.
- No identifier for a product that should have one. Look up the manufacturer’s code; only for genuinely custom or handmade items should you mark that no identifier exists.
- Invalid price format. Include the number and currency in the format Merchant Center expects, with no extra symbols.
- Invalid URL or image format. Use full, reachable HTTPS addresses and supported image types.
- Title or description problems. Excessive capitals, promotional text or length beyond limits can trigger policy issues.
Group 3: mismatches between feed and website
Google compares what the feed says with what its crawler sees on the product page. If the price or the availability differs, the product is disapproved as a mismatched value. This is the most frustrating group for stores with frequent changes, because the data is correct in both places at different moments.
| Mismatch | Typical cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Price | A sale starts on the site before the feed updates, or the page shows a different currency or tax treatment | Update the feed when prices change, and make sure tax and currency match the page |
| Availability | Stock sells out on the site while the feed still says in stock | Refresh the feed after stock changes, or use frequent scheduled updates |
| Page not found or redirect | A product was deleted or the link changed | Fix links and keep redirects clean |
| Variant mismatch | The feed item points to a page that shows a different default variant | Use variant-specific URLs and keep identifiers aligned |
| Crawler blocked | The page blocks Google’s crawler or loads price only after a script | Make price and availability visible in the page’s HTML and allow the crawler |
Mismatches are a timing problem, so the cure is timing: make the feed follow the site quickly. Many stores refresh feeds daily, and a flash sale then creates a window where everything mismatches. Moving to frequent updates, or updating through the platform’s own sync, closes the window. A system that updates stock and price changes to Google as they happen, with a queue to respect limits, is the same pattern as in inventory sync across sales channels.
Group 4: image problems
- Image too small. Google specifies minimum sizes; use larger images.
- Promotional overlay. Text such as sale or free shipping on the image can cause disapproval.
- Watermarks and logos. Keep the main image clean; place logos elsewhere if at all.
- Placeholder or generic image. A grey box or a stock picture instead of the real product.
- Image not accessible. The URL returns an error or is blocked for crawlers.
- Wrong image for the variant. A blue product showing a red image causes issues and returns.
Fix images in the product record and replace them at scale with a consistent, clean main photo. Where you have thousands, product photo editing automates backgrounds and sizes.
Group 5: policy and landing page issues
Policies cover prohibited products, misleading claims, missing return or contact information and checkout problems. They are not about attributes alone but about the whole account and site. Typical issues include a website without a clear returns policy, missing shipping information, a checkout that does not work or a page that is not secure. Read each message in full, because policy issues often relate to the site rather than to individual products, and a fix on the site clears many products at once.
A triage routine
- Open the diagnostics and sort issues by affected products.
- Pick the largest group and open an example product.
- Find the cause in the source product record, the mapping or the site.
- Fix it at the source and, where possible, add a rule to stop recurrence.
- Resubmit or wait for the next feed update, then confirm the count falls.
- Record what changed, and move to the next group.
A pre-submit checklist
- Every product has a title, description, image, price, availability, condition and brand.
- Identifiers are valid and real; none invented.
- Titles follow a formula and avoid promotional text and capitals.
- Main images are large, clean and accessible.
- Price and tax treatment match the product page.
- Availability follows real stock, with an update frequency that matches how fast stock changes.
- Landing pages load, show price in the HTML and allow the crawler.
- The site shows clear returns, shipping and contact information.
Prevent errors with automatic checks
The best feed is one that cannot be submitted with an obvious error. A validation step before export can check required fields, identifier validity, title length, image reachability and price format, and report or block failures. It can also compare a sample of feed prices with live page prices to catch a mismatch before Google does. Our ecommerce catalog automation and product SEO titles and meta tags services build these checks and the title rules, and supplier feed sync validates incoming supplier data so that errors never enter your catalogue.
A worked example
A store with 3,000 products sees 1,100 disapproved in Merchant Center. Diagnostics show four groups: 620 with missing brand, 280 with mismatched availability, 140 with an invalid identifier and 60 with a promotional overlay on the image. Fixing the brand field by mapping vendor to brand clears 620 products in one change. Moving the feed to frequent updates clears most of the availability mismatches. Replacing 140 placeholder identifiers with real barcodes, where they exist, and marking truly custom products correctly clears the next group, and a simple image rule removes the overlay problem. Within a few days, 1,000 of the 1,100 are approved. The lesson is that four fixes at the source cleared more than a thousand errors, which is why triage by group beats fixing product by product.
Sources and further reading
Figures and rules in this guide come from the primary pages below. Platform limits and prices change, so open the page before you build on a number.
- Google Merchant Center Help: product data specification, required and optional attributes
- Google Merchant Center Help: product issues, how issues are reported and fixed
- Google Merchant Center Help: shopping ads policies, policy requirements for products and sites