Google Merchant Center: setup, feeds and fixing errors

Merchant Center holds your business information and your product data for Google. Each product you send there can show in free listings and, once you link Google Ads, in Shopping ads and Performance Max campaigns. Google checks every product against its product data specification and its Shopping policies, and reports what it finds as issues on the product or on the account.

It is not a shop and not a product information system. Merchant Center shows what you send it; when your shop changes, the data in Merchant Center only changes after the next upload. That is why most errors come down to two things: data that was never complete, and data that has drifted out of step with the website.

Google's getting started guide walks through sign-up. Each Google account email address can create one Merchant Center account, so use an address your business controls, not a personal one that leaves with an employee.

There are two basic ways to send products. A feed is a file (XML or tab-separated text) that you upload or that Google fetches on a schedule from a URL. The API route pushes each product to Google as it changes. Google Sheets and shop platform apps sit on top of these. For the fields and formats a feed file needs, see the Google Shopping feed specification; for managing feeds across several channels, see product feed management.

If you built on the API: Google's Content API for Shopping was sunset on 18 August 2026, and requests to it get progressive errors from 1 September 2026. Its successor is the Merchant API. Any app or script that still calls the Content API needs to move, or apply for the extended access Google offers.

Google's product data specification lists dozens of attributes. These are the ones behind most issues. The full field reference, with examples, is in the Google Shopping feed specification, and listing tips per field are in the Google Shopping listing guide.

Issues live on the Needs attention tab under Products. Product issues affect one product and its listings; account issues (setup and policy) affect everything in a country, and can end in a suspension. Filter by issue to see every affected product, or download the affected products as a CSV file to fix them in bulk.

Fixes are not instant. Google says changes can take 24 to 72 hours to show on the Needs attention page. For page-crawl issues such as a price mismatch you can request a website check, which can take up to 12 hours, and you cannot send another request in that time. If you think an issue is wrong, choose I disagree with the issue. Google limits review requests: you may have one chance to disagree, account reviews can take up to 7 business days, and a failed second attempt can start a cool down that grows each time.

Each issue below has its own page with the exact issue name, what it means, the usual causes, a numbered fix and how to stop it coming back. Issue names follow Google's English help center, which is what most accounts show.

Most disapprovals come back if you only patch them inside Merchant Center, because the next upload sends the same wrong data again. Fix the source, then let the fix flow through.

WISEPIM keeps your product data in one place and sends it to Google in two ways. The Merchant Center connection (in beta) pushes products through Google's Merchant API, using the SKU as the product ID, and can create the API data source for you. It sends title, description, link, images, price, sale price, availability, condition, a GTIN when its check digit is valid, brand, MPN, product type, item group ID, shipping weight and, when you map it, the Google product category. A daily check compares title, price and availability in Merchant Center with your WISEPIM data and stores the issues Google reports.

Feed Hub publishes a hosted Google Shopping XML feed instead, regenerated on a schedule or when products change. It can also carry fields the connection does not send, such as color, size, gender, age group and shipping, when you map them. Before anything leaves, the Google Shopping rule pack in Quality Guard blocks products with an empty title, description or SKU, no image, a price of zero, a title over 150 or a description over 5,000 characters, HTML in the text, or a GTIN with a wrong check digit, and warns on missing brand, MPN or EAN.