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Description text too short in Google Merchant Center: find the flagged products and every Shopify product with no description

ARLing s. r. o. · 20 October 2026

Google Merchant Center requires a description for each product, and it reports Description text too short when a description is too brief to meet its minimum requirements. Shopify merchants ask a simpler question on the Shopify Community forum: how to find all products without a description, without opening each product. The Shopify admin can't answer it with a filter: Shopify says its search and filters don't support searching for products that are missing a specific attribute, and for products with no tags it suggests the product export instead. In our study of 113 stores that Shopify features, 34 stores (30.1%) had at least one sampled product with fewer than 80 characters of description text, and 130 of the 2,098 sampled products (6.2%) had no description text at all. This note shows where Merchant Center lists the flagged products, how to find empty descriptions with the export, which text Google receives from Shopify, and what Shopify and Google suggest you write.

Why the admin search won't find them

Shopify says that the search bar and filters in the admin don't support searching for products that are missing a specific attribute, and gives products with no tags as the example: such a search may return incomplete or unreliable results. The filters it documents, such as Vendors, Tag, Statuses, Categories, Types, Collection and Metafields, include no filter for the description, while a word search looks through product titles, descriptions and tags.

Find them in Merchant Center and in the product export

If Merchant Center shows the message, go to Products in Merchant Center and select the Needs attention tab: it lists the affected products. To find products with no description at all, including any you don't sync to Google, use the Shopify product export, which covers all products. Shopify describes this method for products with no tags; the export keeps the description in its own Description column, so the same check works there.

  1. From your Shopify admin, go to Products.
  2. Click Export, select All products and click Export products; Shopify sends the CSV file to your e-mail.
  3. Open the file in a spreadsheet.
  4. Keep the rows that have a title: a product's details are in its first row, and the further rows of the same product, for variants and extra images, leave Title and Description empty.
  5. Sort or filter the Description column for blank cells: those products have no description.

A description can also be filled with very little text. Merchant Center's Needs attention tab shows the products Google flags as too short, and our free check flags sampled products with fewer than 80 characters of plain text in the description, a threshold of our own rather than a Shopify or Google rule.

Which description Google receives from Shopify

The Google & YouTube app sends Google either your product descriptions or the meta description from each product's search engine listing. The meta description is used when, in the app, you go to Settings, Product feed, Additional settings to sync with Google Merchant Center and Product titles and descriptions, select Product descriptions, then select Search engine product descriptions and Save. So check which of the two texts is short before you edit.

A change on the product page in your Shopify admin is synced to Google, but Google's errors and warnings differ from Shopify's, so check the app and Merchant Center's Needs attention tab after you edit.

What to write

In the Shopify admin, the description goes into the Description field on the product page, and Shopify advises describing the product in detail; a reseller should not copy the manufacturer's exact description. Shopify suggests product specifications such as size, material and weight, suggested uses, benefits including evidence, and engaging details, and its guidance for AI platforms asks for clear, accurate and detailed descriptions.

Google recommends a description of around 500 to 1,000 characters, at most 5,000, with the most important details in the first 160 to 500 characters, standard grammar and a punctuation mark at the end. It asks for the most relevant attributes, such as size, material, intended age range, special features or technical specs, and for visual details such as shape, pattern, texture and design. Google also says that descriptions created with generative AI belong in a separate attribute, structured_description.

Frequently asked questions

Why can't I filter Shopify products by an empty description?

Shopify says its admin search and filters don't support searching for products that are missing a specific attribute, and its list of product filters has no description filter. For products with no tags, Shopify documents a way around it: export the product list and look for blank cells in a spreadsheet; the Description column of the same export works the same way.

How long should a product description be?

Google recommends around 500 to 1,000 characters for Merchant Center, allows up to 5,000, and wants the most important details in the first 160 to 500 characters. The 80 characters in our check are only our own threshold for a description that is almost empty, not a platform rule.

Does the free public check find products without a description?

From the outside, yes: it reads up to 20 products from your public product export, flags descriptions with fewer than 80 characters of plain text and names up to 5 of the affected products. Some themes keep product details in other fields, which this count does not see.

Check up to 20 product descriptions for free

Our free public check needs no install and no e-mail; it reads up to 20 products from your public product export and shows, for each rule, how many of the checked items are affected. For descriptions it flags fewer than 80 characters of plain text and names up to 5 of the products. Our Shopify app, Agentic Product Check, checks every active and unlisted product in your admin for an empty description and for one under 80 characters, but it is waiting for Shopify App Store approval and cannot be installed yet.

Check your store for free

Sources. The facts in this note are numbered after our internal fact list and were checked on the publication date. If a source has changed since, write to support@arling.sk and we will correct this page.