Google Merchant Center Feed Errors: Causes and Fixes

How Merchant Center reads your file

A product file for Merchant Center has one product per line and Google's attribute names in the first row: id, title, price and so on. Google accepts a tab-delimited text file (.txt), and the attribute names are always in English, whatever language your products are in.

After an upload, Google checks every product and lists the problems under Products → Needs attention. A problem on one product doesn't stop the others, so a file can be "accepted" while half of it is disapproved. Most disapprovals come from a short list of formatting mistakes, covered below.

These attributes are needed for every product:

New products also need brand, and products with a barcode need gtin.

Price without a currency code

Cause: The price is a bare number (18.00), or uses a $ sign. Several countries use dollars, so Google can't tell which one you mean.

Fix: Write the number with a period for decimals, a space, and the ISO 4217 code: 18.00 USD, 24.95 CAD, 19.99 EUR. Don't use thousand separators: 1299.00 GBP, not 1,299.00 GBP.

For discounts, keep the regular price in price and put the lower price in sale_price. If sale_price isn't lower than price, Google ignores it.

Availability and preorder dates

Cause: availability holds a store's own wording, such as In Stock, sold out or Available. Google only accepts four values: in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder and backorder.

Fix: Replace the values with Google's. For preorder, also add availability_date, the date the product will ship, in ISO 8601 format: 2026-12-01T09:00-0500. Google asks for the date on backorder too.

condition works the same way: only new, used and refurbished are accepted.

GTINs and identifiers

Cause: The gtin has the wrong number of digits or a wrong check digit. Spreadsheets cause most of these: a 13-digit barcode is shown as 4.00638E+12 and saved that way, and UPCs lose their leading zero.

Fix:

• Format barcode columns as Text before pasting, so the digits are kept
• Copy barcodes again from the packaging or your supplier if they already show in scientific notation
• Remove spaces and dashes: 4006381333931, not 4006-3813-3393-1

A product with no barcode should have its manufacturer part number in mpn. For handmade, custom or vintage items with neither, set identifier_exists to no. Don't make up a GTIN: Google checks them against the GS1 database.

Images and links

Cause: link or image_link is a relative path such as mug.jpg, or the image is behind a login or blocked from crawlers.

Fix: Use the full address, starting with https://, for the product page and every image. Up to 10 extra images can go in additional_image_link, separated by commas. Open a few links in a private browser window to check they load.

Variants: item_group_id

A shirt in three sizes is three products for Google, each with its own id, price and availability. To show them as one product with options, give all three the same item_group_id, and fill in the attribute that differs, such as size or color.

Example

id         item_group_id  title                     size  price
TEE-S      TEE            Organic Cotton Tee - S    S     24.00 USD
TEE-M      TEE            Organic Cotton Tee - M    M     24.00 USD
TEE-L      TEE            Organic Cotton Tee - L    L     24.00 USD

For clothing, Google also asks for color, size, gender and age_group in many countries. gender takes male, female or unisex, and age_group takes newborn, infant, toddler, kids or adult.

Before you upload

1. Check that every price has a currency code
2. Check that availability and condition only use Google's values
3. Check that every barcode has 8, 12, 13 or 14 digits and none show as E+12
4. Check that links and images start with https://
5. Save as tab-delimited text (.txt)

The Merchant Center feed checker does all five in your browser and converts the values it can. Starting from a store export? The Shopify to Merchant Center converter builds the feed for you.