Your Google Shopping feed is the file that tells Google what you sell: every product, price, image, and detail, in a format Merchant Center can read.
Get it right and Google matches your products to the right searches. Get it wrong and your products barely show, no matter how good your campaigns are.
This guide covers the requirements, the format, and a working template. But most people land here mid-task, so find your situation first:
- Setting up Shopping Ads for the first time? Start with the Google Shopping setup guide, then come back here for the feed details.
- Need to know what a specific attribute does? The full feed attributes reference covers all 60+ of them.
- Products disapproved or feed errors? Go straight to fixing Merchant Center errors.
- Feed works, but you want better results? That’s product feed optimization, the highest-leverage work in all of Shopping Ads.
Still here? Then you want to understand or build the feed itself. Let’s go.
Table of Contents
Part 1 – Basic Google Shopping Feed Fixes
Let’s start with the easiest part, the name.
The feed you need for your Google Shopping Ads is known under a ton of different names: merchant center feed, google shopping feed, product data feed, google product feed, google data feed, etc.
Those might sound complicated but all of these are the same thing: a file with all of the product information of your store in a format that can be read by another system.
These kinds of feeds are used by a lot of different systems. But if you want to advertise your products in Google Shopping, you’ll need to adhere to Google’s requirements.
Google Shopping feed requirements
Every product in your feed needs these attributes. Miss one and the product gets disapproved:
| Attribute | Requirement | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
id | Required | Never change it after launch, you lose all performance history |
title | Required | Max 150 characters, ~70 visible. Your biggest performance lever |
description | Required | No promo text (“SALE!”) or Google disapproves the product |
link | Required | Must go to the exact variant shown in the ad |
image_link | Required | White background, no text or watermarks, 800x800px+ |
price | Required | Must match your landing page exactly, incl. currency code (“29.99 USD”) |
availability | Required | “in_stock” while sold out risks account suspension |
brand | Required* | Own products: use your store name. Never placeholder brands |
gtin | If it exists | No GTIN? Set identifier_exists to “false” instead |
condition | Required | Defaults to “new”, set explicitly for used or refurbished |
color, size, gender, age_group | Apparel only | Required for all clothing and accessories |
item_group_id | Variants only | Same value for all variants of one product, unique id per variant |
*Required when the product has a brand. For the full list of 60+ attributes including all optional ones, see the feed attributes reference.
Feed format and a working template
A Shopping feed is a spreadsheet: one row per product, one column per attribute. Merchant Center accepts Google Sheets, tab-separated files (.txt), XML, or a direct API connection. For most stores, a Google Sheet or your platform’s app does the job.
Here’s what a minimal working feed looks like:
| id | title | description | link | image_link | price | availability | brand | gtin | condition |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SKU-1042 | Cloudrunner Men’s Running Shoes Lightweight Mesh Blue Size 10 | Lightweight running shoe with breathable mesh upper… | https://store.com/cloudrunner-blue-10 | https://store.com/img/cr-blue.jpg | 89.99 USD | in_stock | Cloudrunner | 0012345678905 | new |
| SKU-1043 | Cloudrunner Men’s Running Shoes Lightweight Mesh Red Size 10 | Lightweight running shoe with breathable mesh upper… | https://store.com/cloudrunner-red-10 | https://store.com/img/cr-red.jpg | 89.99 USD | in_stock | Cloudrunner | 0012345678912 | new |
Note what the two rows share and what they don’t: same product, so they’d get the same item_group_id, but each variant has its own id, link, image_link and gtin. That’s the pattern for every variant in your catalog.
Upload it in Merchant Center under Products > Add products (Google renamed “Feeds” to “Sources” in Merchant Center Next, so older tutorials may look different).
Beyond the required attributes, there are 40+ optional ones: custom labels for campaign structure, lifestyle images, sale prices, and more. The feed attributes reference covers every single one, including which are worth your time.
The Google Shopping Policies
Besides all of the required product attributes, there are also some meta requirements you need to pay attention to. These are the various Shopping policies.
Violating these policies is what gets your Google Merchant Center account suspended. I’ll cover each of them below and show you how to fix them.
Prohibited or Restricted product policy
If you are selling products that are heavily regulated or not allowed on Google (categories like alcohol, adult content, tobacco, counterfeit goods, weapons, drugs, copyrighted content, etc.) you could run into these types of errors.
So if you’re not sure about your products, check the list of prohibited or restricted items.
This can change depending on the country you’re selling in. So if you’re expanding internationally, the grounds for disapproval might be different.
Landing page policy
Google wants the best possible experience for a user on your site. If the link you provide to the landing page is broken or returns a different kind of server error, that product or your whole feed might get disapproved.
A second common error in this category is sending the user to the homepage instead of the specific product page.
Welcome gates or pop ups that block the whole page are also not allowed by Google. So if you do use a popup, make sure it’s easy for the user to get around it.
Check the list of landing page restrictions.
Return and Refund policy
You need to have clear information on your site on how a customer can get a refund or how she can return an order.
If you don’t have these policies in place, your feed will be suspended, and if it remains unsolved, your account will be suspended.
Shipping settings
You need to provide accurate and complete information with regards to the service (fast, slow, express, insured, etc.) and associated costs.
If you are shipping from outside the country you are targeting you need to provide clear information about the cost and type of service. Also, be clear about extra customs fees that might be applied to the order.
The basic thinking behind this policy is: don’t surprise your customer. Be clear what to expect and what it’s going to cost.
There are two ways to set your Shipping rates:
- In your Google Merchant Center account (recommended)
- In your product feed
I prefer #1 because it gives you a good overview of the shipping rates that are active.
If you include the shipping attributes in your product feed it overrides the values in GMC. That’s where things often go wrong.
Problem 1: incomplete shipping value
There are two ways to pass the correct data for this attribute, one is to do this in a single field:
shipping: US:::4.95 USD
Or add all of the sub-attributes separately:
shipping_country, shipping_region, shipping_service or shipping_price (only this last one is required).
Problem 2: Calculated shipping rates
Sometimes, shipping rates depend on the weight of the product. If you’ve configured the different brackets in GMC, you need to make sure that you send through the weight value in the correct format for each product. This includes the value + measurement unit.
What if Merchant Center flags errors or disapprovals after you upload? Every error has its own cause and fix, so I’ve put the complete troubleshooting playbook in a separate guide: fixing Google Merchant Center errors. For policy violations and suspensions, see recovering a suspended account.
Lifting your Google Merchant Center suspension If your account got suspended and you’ve fixed the issues that led to that suspension you can request an account review.
How to Create a shopping feed from scratch
If you’re unable to get any of the integrations or feed generators to work, sometimes you need to get back to basics to find the underlying issue.
With shopping feeds, that means creating a new simple product feed from scratch where you can control each and every variable.
You can do this when you’re creating a new feed in Google Merchant Center. Google will generate a new spreadsheet that’s linked to your GMC account and which detects any changes and automatically updates the information in your product feed.
This is a very time-consuming approach, plus all the data needs to be updated as soon as something changes in your store. So I only use this approach if products rarely change or if I need to troubleshoot why a specific product feed won’t work.
There also is an official google shopping feed template. It’s a copy of the template that you’ll get from Google Merchant Center if you use Google Sheets for your product feeds. Be sure to also check tab 2 in the document called Example. This will illustrate how to use the template.
Product variations, Bulk Changes & Multiple Feeds
Luckily, you don’t have to go through the above to create your shopping feed. Most ecommerce platforms will have some kind of integration with Google Merchant Center. Shopify, for example, has its own free app that pushes your products into the Merchant Center. Learn more about how to connect your Shopify store to Google Merchant Center.
And for some stores, that’s all they need. But in some cases, you need extra flexibility or features that these basic setups are too limited.
To me there are a couple of features that make dealing with product feed a lot easier:
- Properly handle product variations
- Ability to quickly make (bulk) changes
- Manage multiple product feeds
- Take advantage of custom labels
- Use optimized feeds for Bing, Facebook Ads, etc.
Some of these or must-haves, others will save you some time.
There are a ton of tools out there that will help you do this (skip ahead for a big list of them). They all work in the following way:
- Grab product data from the store (via an app, plugin, extension, API, etc.)
- Ability to edit data in your product feed via the tool
- Push feed(s) to Google Merchant Center
All tools below will do #1 and #3. But not all will do #2.
With the free or cheap ones (except for Feed Rules), you don’t have the ability to edit any of the data in your product feed before it gets pushed to Google Merchant Center.
That means no bulk changes, multiple product feeds or custom labels.
These often have the features that really make the difference. They go under a number of different names: data feed management software, feed management, shopping feed platform, etc.
Google Shopping Feed Tools
The main benefit of these comes out when you’re managing multiple product feeds. That can be google shopping feeds for multiple countries or a feed for Google and another for Bing Shopping.
These are the main providers of this software:
- GoDataFeed (paid plans starting from $39/mo)
- Channable (paid plans starting from €29/mo)
- DataFeedWatch (paid plans starting from $64/mo)
- Sales&Orders (paid plans starting from $10/mo)
You’ll see the pricing varies widely between the different tools. Don’t make a decision purely based on price. If you’re interested in any of these tools, sign up for a trial and explore what they can do for you.
Pro tip: most of them will include a free setup, which will help you get your product feeds ready in no time!
Google Merchant Center Attribute Rules
Attribute Rules (formerly know as feed rules) is a little-known feature in Google Merchant Center that can do some of the things these platforms can, the only difference is that you can do it for free.
You can use these to add new information to your Google Merchant Center data feed and make bulk changes. In the screenshot above, I’ve used the functionality to add a custom label to the feed, depending on the product type.
Google Shopping Feed for Shopify
A quick search in the Shopify app store shows you’ve got plenty of choices. Opinions over which one is the best vary. I’m a big fan of the standard Google & YouTube app by Shopify. It used to be buggy, but they’ve worked hard over the last couple of years to improve it.
Here is the list of solid options:
- Google & YouTube app by Shopify (free – by Shopify) – link
- Feed For Google Shopping (paid – Simprosys InfoMedia) – link
- ShoppingFeeder (free & paid – ShoppingFeeder) – link
- Multifeeds
Some of the data feed management providers mentioned above, also have their own Shopify apps: Channable and DataFeedWatch.
Google Shopping Feed for WooCommerce
To generate your shopping feeds on WooCommerce, there are many plugins out there. Two of our favorites:
Apart from the above, all the feed platforms also offer WooCommerce support: GoDataFeed, Channable & DataFeedWatch
Google Shopping Feed for Magento
To get your Magento product feed working, there are plenty of extensions available:
Most of the data feed management providers mentioned above, also have their own Magento extensions: Channable (M2).
Google Shopping Feed for BigCommerce
Other BigCommerce apps that will help you with Google Shopping:
Google Shopping Feed for Prestashop
- Google Shopping Merchant Center Module (paid) – link
- Google Shopping Export (paid) – link
- Google Shopping Feed in 3 min (paid) – link
Frequently asked questions
What format does a Google Shopping feed need to be?
Google Sheets, tab-separated text files, XML, or the Merchant API. For most stores the easiest route is their ecommerce platform’s integration: the Google & YouTube app for Shopify, or a feed plugin for WooCommerce.
Which attributes are required in a Shopping feed?
For every product: id, title, description, link, image_link, price, availability, brand, and gtin (or identifier_exists set to “false”). Apparel adds color, size, gender, and age_group.
How often should my feed update?
At least daily, so prices and stock levels stay in sync with your site. Mismatches between feed and website are the fastest route to disapprovals and account suspensions. High-volume stores should sync more often via API.
Can I just use a spreadsheet instead of a feed app?
Yes. A Google Sheet works fine for small catalogs that don’t change often. Once you pass a few hundred products or daily price changes, switch to an automated source: manual updates always fall behind.
Master the Subtle Tweaks of the Setup
You made it till the end, congrats!
Now you know how and where to fix the problems with your Google Shopping Feed.
If you’d like to know what to do after setting up, check out my Google Ads Success course. Through a series of video lessons, you’ll learn how to set up your Shopping campaigns for maximum impact. The feedback from our students has been really great so I encourage you to check it out!
