What a product feed actually is
Think of a product feed as your catalog written for a machine. Each row describes one product: what it is, what it costs, whether it’s in stock, where its page lives and where its main photo is. Google Merchant Center fetches that file on a schedule and uses it to show your products in Shopping ads, Performance Max campaigns and the free listings on the Shopping tab.
Google doesn’t read your store admin directly. You hand it the catalog in a format it understands, and Merchant Center checks every item against its product data rules before anything is shown.
Most platforms can export a feed. Shopify has the Google & YouTube app, and Horoshop, Prom and OpenCart all have export settings. The catch is that a default export is rarely ready for Google as it is: titles are short, attributes are missing, and supplier photos sometimes carry promo stickers.
The fields Google Merchant Center requires
Some fields apply to every product, others only to certain categories. These are the ones that matter for almost every store:
| Field | What goes in it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| id | A unique product code that never changes | 10482 |
| title | The product name, up to 150 characters | Women’s Columbia puffer jacket, black, M |
| description | The product description, up to 5,000 characters | Warm hooded jacket with… |
| link | The product page on your own domain | shop.example/puffer-10482 |
| image_link | The main product image | shop.example/img/10482.jpg |
| availability | Stock status | in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder |
| price | Price with an ISO currency code | 89.00 USD |
| brand | The brand, for most new products | Columbia |
| gtin or mpn | The manufacturer barcode, or the manufacturer part number if there’s no barcode. Not your internal SKU | 0194004563210 |
| condition | Required for used and refurbished items | new |
If a product genuinely has no GTIN or MPN, for example a handmade item, set identifier_exists to no instead of leaving the fields empty.
For clothing sold in the US, Google also asks for color, size, gender and age_group. Variants of the same product, such as sizes of one jacket, share an item_group_id.
Which format to use
Merchant Center accepts several sources:
- An XML file at a URL (RSS 2.0 or Atom). The most common choice: your platform regenerates the file and Merchant Center fetches it on a schedule.
- A tab-separated text file (TSV or TXT). Handy if your catalog lives in a spreadsheet.
- Google Sheets. Fine for a small catalog that someone updates by hand.
- The Merchant API. For large catalogs and frequent price changes.
A scheduled URL is better than uploading a file once. The data refreshes on its own, and nobody has to remember to re-export after a price change.
Setting up a feed, step by step
1. Export the catalog
Get a feed URL or an export file from your platform. On Shopify, connect the Google & YouTube app or a feed app; on other platforms, look in the export or integrations settings.
2. Check it against the site
Price and availability in the feed must match the product page at the moment Google crawls it. A mismatch is one of the most common reasons for disapproval. If a product is on sale, put the regular price in price and the discounted one in sale_price, or put the current price the shopper actually sees in price.
3. Rewrite weak titles
The title is the strongest signal Google uses to match a product to a search. Compare:
- Before: “Model 2231”
- After: “Columbia Heavenly women’s puffer jacket, black, size M”
Put the product type, brand, model, color and size in the title, with the important words first, because ads often cut titles short.
4. Fill in attributes
The fuller the data, the better Google understands the product. Add brand, GTIN or MPN, color, size, material and gender where they apply. Empty attributes don’t always cause a disapproval, but they do cost you impressions.
5. Check the images
Each image link has to open, show the product itself and carry no promo text, watermarks or borders. Google’s minimum is 100 × 100 pixels, or 250 × 250 for clothing; in practice, 800 × 800 or larger looks better.
6. Add the feed and read the diagnostics
Add the feed in Merchant Center, wait for processing and open the diagnostics. You’ll see which products are approved, which have warnings and which are disapproved, with the reason for each.
If Google starts disapproving products, compare the feed’s price and availability with the product page first. That’s where most problems start.
Mistakes that get products disapproved
- The feed price differs from the site price. Often the feed refreshes once a day while prices change more often.
- The feed says “in stock” but the product is sold out on the site.
- A broken image link, or a product link that points away from your store’s domain. The image itself can sit on a CDN, as long as it opens.
- A title with no product type, just a model number or SKU.
- Promo text on the image: “−30%”, “Best seller” or a store logo over the product.
- Empty required fields, or a price without a currency code.
- A stale feed. Items not updated for 30 days expire.
After fixing, refresh the feed in Merchant Center and check the product status again a few hours later; a full review can take up to a few days.
Google feed vs. Meta catalog feed
A Meta catalog (Facebook and Instagram) reads almost the same base fields: id, title, description, price, availability, link and image. One feed often works for both.
The difference is what sells. Google matches products to searches, so complete titles and attributes win. On Meta people scroll a feed, so the image decides; a price or sale badge on the photo can outperform a clean product shot. Meta allows those overlays and Google doesn’t, which is why it pays to prepare images for the two channels separately.
- A product feed is a structured list of your products that Google Merchant Center reads on a schedule.
- Every product needs id, title, description, link, image_link, availability and price; most new products also need brand and GTIN or MPN.
- Price and availability in the feed must match the product page, or Google disapproves the item.
- A scheduled feed URL beats a one-off upload: prices and stock stay current without anyone remembering to re-export.
- Clothing needs color, size, gender and age_group, and variants are tied together with item_group_id.
FAQ
It’s a file listing your store’s products, one row per item, with a title, description, price, availability, product page link and image link. Google Merchant Center and Meta catalogs read it to build product ads.
Product feeds for Google Merchant Center and Meta catalogs: better titles and attributes for Google, sale badges on photos for Meta. Changes only after you approve them.