How to diagnose feed errors in Google Merchant Center

Time and time again, over a number of e-commerce platforms and support groups, I've seen advertisers complain that their Google feeds are returning errors and they cannot figure out why. This is a very common issue with a surprisingly simple solution, so don't fret. In this guide we'll show you how to find the specific products that are causing feed errors so you can make quick changes and get your products approved.

1. Log into Google Merchant Center

2. Click on Products > Diagnostics 

On the Diagnostic page you will see three tabs - Item Issues; Feed Issues; Account Issues. 

As you can see from the image below, we have 1256 disapproved products! So now we get into identifying these products and what issues have caused them to be rejected by the merchant center. 

If we scroll down under the Item Issues tab, there we will see the following:

• A description of the issue
• The country of the feed that is being affected
• Number of affected items (/products)
• A percentage of the products in your feed that have been affected
• A percentage of your clicks that have been affected 

Let's begin with your first item issue- "Pending initial review". This refers to the initial review of your website and website items after the first time you upload a product feed. This initial review can take up to 3 days, however it's common for review status to remain pending due to some policy violation for a particular product. 

To identify which products are affected by this error, you can click on View Samples under the Affected Items column. As you can see from the image below, the merchant center shows you each and every item that is still pending review. 

It's useful to see how many of your products are affected by the same issue, but troubleshooting the error itself requires taking a look at the attributes of individual products. Under the Example column, you can click on individual items to view more details. If we click on Charcoal Sheri Collar Shirt, that will open the individual product page where we can scroll down to see its Item Status. 

Here we see that this has a mismatched domain issue and missing identifiers, which is likely the reason behind the pending review. As you can see in the Actions column on the extreme right, the merchant center tells you exactly what is required of you to get this product approved:

1- Provide at least 2 of the missing identifiers

2-  Use the same domain for product landing page URLs as in your Merchant Center website setting

If these Actions aren't clear enough, you can click on Learn more to read some support documentation.

By scrolling further, we see that the merchant center has even told us which attributes for this product were rejected. Beneath Rejected Attributes there is a link shown- this has been rejected thus you need to edit your product offering details in your Google (Argentina) feed. To edit product attributes, simply go to the Manage Offers page in ShoppingFeeder and type in the product name or title. 

You'll also note that the product type attribute value is 'uncategorized' which does not meet Google's requirements. Product_type is how Google determines where your product fits in its taxonomy and it is utterly essential that you enter a value for this attribute. 

So as you can see, combing through the Diagnostics page is a sure-fire why of identifying issues with your feed so you can make quick changes to your product offerings without losing any sleep. 

Now that you've taken a look at the layout of Diagnostics, let's discuss some common issues to help you avoid these problems in the future:

Invalid values 

Attribute values must be correctly formatted in order for the product to be approved. For example, the gender attribute must be 'female' or 'male' or 'unisex' and cannot be a numerical value. Merchant center will usually indicate the attribute you need to change in square brackets like so: "Invalid value [gender]"

Missing required attributes 

Every product must include, at a minimum, these values: 

• google_product_category
• product_id
• title
• id
• description
• link
• image_link
• price 
• availability
• brand / GTIN / MPN

#TIP

Google usually requires 2 unique product identifiers, which can be either brand, MPN and/or GTIN. 

For certain product categories, there are additional attributes which must have values, and you can read more about that in Google's Product Data Specifications.

Again, merchant center will usually indicate where you've gone wrong. For example "Missing required attribute apparel [color]" tells you that you have an apparel product that is missing the color attribute, which is a requirement for items in that category. 

Missing tax and shipping information 

Omitting a product's tax and shipping info is a common Google Shopping mistake. You can read up on Google's guidelines on configuring delivery costs.

Product issues aside, there may be other problems with your site that's causing an issue with your feed. 

Return and refund policy 

Every store that submits a feed to Google merchant center must  have a returns and refunds policy clearly stated on their website. 

Here's a nifty little checklist to keep you on your toes the next time you're creating your feed: