Google Merchant Center feed errors explained: the 12 rejections that block most products and how to fix each in the feed

01

Missing or invalid id

Google's spec says to "use a unique value for each product. Use the product's SKU where possible," capped at 50 characters. Meta requires the same content id, unique within the catalog, up to 100 characters, and it must differ from any item_group_id. A feed that reuses the parent product id for every size and colour does not raise an error, it just overwrites the earlier rows in Diagnostics.

Fix

<g:id>SKU-JUMPER-NAVY-M</g:id>

In Shopify, map id to the variant id or SKU, not the product id. In WooCommerce, export the variation SKU for every row, not the parent post ID.

02

Missing or invalid title

Google caps title at 150 characters and warns: "don't include promotional text like 'free shipping', all capital letters, or gimmicky foreign characters." Meta caps title at 200 characters, recommends under 65 to avoid truncation, and expects it "written in title case."

Fix

<g:title>Merino Wool Jumper, Navy, Medium</g:title>

Strip any ALL-CAPS badge text or "FREE SHIPPING" string a theme or plugin appends to the title field before export.

03

Missing or invalid description

Google allows up to 5000 characters and says to "include only information about the product," no promotional text or all caps. Meta caps description at 9999 characters, plain text only, no HTML and no links, and it must differ from the title.

Fix

<g:description>100% merino wool jumper, ribbed cuffs and hem, machine washable at 30 degrees.</g:description>

Run the description through a strip-tags step (WooCommerce's wp_strip_all_tags() or Shopify's strip_html filter) so leftover <p> and <br> tags from a WYSIWYG editor do not reach the feed.

04

Missing or invalid link

Google requires the link to sit "on your verified domain name," start with http or https, and use "an encoded URL that complies with RFC 2396 or RFC 1738." Meta requires it to "begin with http:// or https://" and point to the business's own domain, not a marketplace or aggregator page.

Fix

<g:link>https://shop.example.com/products/merino-jumper?variant=10293</g:link>

Replace any staging or preview domain left over from a template export, and URL-encode spaces and ampersands rather than leaving them raw.

05

Missing or invalid image_link

Google raised the minimum to 500 by 500 pixels, enforced from 31 January 2027, and rejects "a placeholder or a generic image," scaled-up thumbnails, watermarks or borders. Meta requires images "at least 500 x 500 pixels" in JPEG or PNG, under 8 MB.

Fix

<g:image_link>https://cdn.example.com/products/jumper-navy-1200.jpg</g:image_link>

Point image_link at the CDN URL of the real product photo, not the lazy-load placeholder GIF that some Shopify and WooCommerce themes render before the actual image loads.

06

Invalid price, currency, or a price that does not match checkout

Google's rule covers both problems at once: "accurately submit the product's price and currency, and match with the price from your landing page," using ISO 4217 currency codes. Meta wants the price "as a number, followed by a space and then the 3-letter ISO 4217 currency code," no currency symbols, one currency per file.

Fix

<g:price>39.90 EUR</g:price>
<g:sale_price>29.90 EUR</g:sale_price>

Send price as a plain number plus a space plus the code, not "€39,90". When the store shows a discount at checkout, feed sale_price as well, so the feed and the cart always agree.

07

Invalid availability values

Google accepts exactly four values, in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder, backorder, and must "match the availability from your landing page." Meta accepts only two, in stock and out of stock, "must be written in U.S. English," lowercase, separated by a space rather than an underscore.

Fix

<g:availability>in_stock</g:availability>

Map the plugin's raw stock boolean or a translated word explicitly to the exact enum for each destination, since Google and Meta do not share the same spelling.

08

Missing or invalid condition

Google's condition attribute takes new, refurbished or used, required whenever a product is not new. Meta accepts the same three values and lists condition as required for every item.

Fix

<g:condition>new</g:condition>

Default the column to "new" in the export template instead of leaving it blank when the store never sells used stock.

09

GTIN checksum errors and duplicate GTINs

Google caps gtin at 50 numeric characters, 14 per value, and warns plainly: "if you submit a product with an incorrect GTIN value, your product will be disapproved." Meta accepts UPC (12-digit), EAN (13-digit), JAN or ISBN-13, "no dashes or spaces."

Fix

<g:gtin>4006381333931</g:gtin>

Strip spaces and dashes before export, check the trailing digit is a valid checksum rather than a transposed copy from a spreadsheet barcode column, and never reuse one GTIN across colour or size variants, since each is a physically different product with its own code.

10

Missing or invalid brand

Google requires brand on new products outside a short list of exempt categories, and it rejects placeholder text outright: "don't submit values such as 'N/A', 'Generic', 'No brand', or 'Does not exist'," capped at 70 characters. Meta caps brand at 100 characters.

Fix

<g:brand>Example Knitwear</g:brand>

For a private-label store, feed the store's own registered brand name consistently, not the word a plugin inserts by default when the field is left empty.

11

item_group_id and mismatched variant attributes

Google requires item_group_id to be "a unique value for each group of variants," kept the same across updates, alongside consistent colour, size or material per row. Meta requires the same field to be "unique and differ from all content IDs," so it can never equal any variant's own id.

Fix

<g:item_group_id>10293</g:item_group_id>
<g:color>Navy</g:color>
<g:size>M</g:size>

In Shopify, the product id (not the variant id) is a safe item_group_id. In WooCommerce, use the parent product ID for every variation row, and spell the colour and size attributes identically across all variants of the same product.

12

Shipping and tax setup errors

Google leaves shipping cost to either the feed's shipping attribute or the account's Shipping settings, and it is explicit about tax: "for the US and Canada, don't include any taxes" in the price, while "for all other countries, include value added tax (VAT) or Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the price." Meta reads shipping cost from the feed's shipping attribute or the catalog's shipping profile; leaving both empty leaves checkout cost unknown to either platform.

Fix

<g:shipping>
  <g:country>SK</g:country>
  <g:price>3.90 EUR</g:price>
</g:shipping>

EU stores keep VAT inside price and leave the tax attribute empty. US stores strip tax out of price and set it in either the tax attribute or Merchant Center's account-level tax settings, not both.

13

Check the feed before you submit it

Fixing twelve attributes one export at a time does not scale past a few dozen products. Feed Doctor runs 31 rules against the same checks above, entirely in your browser, for Google Shopping XML or TXT, Meta catalog CSV, Shopify's products.json, WooCommerce exports and generic XML or CSV. Nothing is uploaded anywhere; it flags exactly which id, price, GTIN or availability rows would fail before Google or Meta ever see them.

Open Feed Doctor

14

A clean feed also feeds an AI shopping assistant

An AI shopping assistant answers customer questions from the same feed used for Shopping ads. A missing GTIN, a stale price, or a product still marked in_stock after it sold out gives the assistant the same wrong answer a shopper would get from a broken listing page. ARLing Asistent is grounded in a store's own feed for that reason: the checks that keep a feed out of Merchant Center's disapproval queue are the same ones that keep an assistant from confidently repeating an outdated price or stock level.