Google Merchant Center Feed Validator

About the Google Merchant Center Feed Validator

A Merchant Center feed fails product by product: a price written ₹1,299 instead of 1299.00 INR, “In Stock” for in_stock, a GTIN with a wrong check digit, an image link that opens a Google Drive page, a title in capitals ending in “BEST PRICE!!!”. Drop your feed here — the tab-separated file, a CSV, the XML (RSS 2.0 or Atom), a Google Sheets or Excel file, or a .zip or .gz of one — and every product is checked against Google’s product data specification, with the problem named the way Merchant Center names it (“Missing value [price]”, “Invalid value [gtin]”) and what to write instead.

The whole feed is checked too: ids used twice, the same GTIN on two products, variants without an item_group_id or with the same colour and size, landing pages on another site than the rest. Errors mean Merchant Center rejects the value and the product is likely disapproved; warnings mean it is shortened, ignored or may show less. A feed of 50,000 products is checked in seconds, in your browser: nothing is uploaded. MySmartCoPilot is not affiliated with Google; the name is used only to say which feeds this checks.

Common uses

• Clearing disapprovals after Merchant Center lists “Invalid value” or “Missing value” issues.
• Checking a new feed from a shop plugin, a feed app or an agency before the first upload.
• Checking an edited Google Sheet before it is fetched again.
• Finding the variant, GTIN and id clashes that only show across the whole feed.

What is checked

• Required attributes: id, title, description, link, image_link, availability and price for every product; brand for new products that have one; condition for used and refurbished goods; availability_date for preorder and backorder (availability, availability date).
• Formats and limits: id up to 50 characters, title 150, description 5,000, brand and mpn 70; prices as a number with an ISO 4217 code (price), a sale price below the price (sale price) and sale dates in ISO 8601; the values of availability, condition, gender, age group and the other lists; colours separated by “/”, up to 3 (color); weights, sizes and handling times; shipping values with their country codes and price ranges (shipping).
• Links and images: http or https, ASCII only and up to 2,000 characters (link); image files Merchant Center reads (JPEG, WebP, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF), not a page that shows one, not a placeholder, one link in image_link and up to 10 extra images (image link, additional image link).
• Identifiers: GTIN length and GS1 check digit, the restricted (02, 04, 2) and coupon (05, 98, 99) ranges, ISBN-10 and UPC-E to convert, numbers a spreadsheet damaged (GTIN); identifier_exists and placeholder brands such as N/A or Generic.
• Titles and descriptions: promotional text, prices and shipping in the title, capitals for emphasis, symbols, repeated words, HTML and links in descriptions (title, description).
• The whole feed: ids used twice, variants of a group with the same colour and size, groups of one, a parent row submitted as a product, variants without item_group_id (item group id), the same GTIN or main image on different products, landing pages on another site, columns Merchant Center does not read and tab-separated text (file formats).

Errors, warnings and notes

Errors are values Merchant Center rejects or requires: the product is likely disapproved until they are fixed. Warnings are accepted but cost reach or break an editorial rule: a title Google cuts off, promotional words, a missing brand or identifier, a sale price that has ended. Notes are best practices from Google’s help pages, such as a description that says too little. A product is counted as ready when it has no error.

The corrected feed

The corrected feed is your feed as tab-separated text with the fixes that are certain already made: columns renamed to attribute names (MRP to maximum_retail_price, Image URL to image_link), every value trimmed and on one line, availability, condition, gender, age group and yes/no values written as the specification writes them, prices as 1299.00 INR, GTINs as digits with ISBN-10 and UPC-E converted, colours separated by “/”, spaces in URLs encoded (and commas inside a list of image links), extra links in image_link moved to additional_image_link, a shipping price written where the region goes put in its place, the highlights and product types an XML feed repeats kept as lists, and HTML taken out of descriptions. What needs a person — a wrong check digit, a placeholder brand, a promotional title, a missing image — stays as it is and stays on the fix list.

Where the rules come from

Every check follows Google’s own help: the product data specification and each attribute’s page linked above, and the requirements for product data files. Check digits follow the GS1 General Specifications, as in the Check Digit Validator. Where Google’s pages differ, the stricter reading is used and said: a preorder and a backorder both need availability_date, as the attribute’s own page says.

Limitations

• It reads the feed, not your website or your account: it cannot see the landing pages, the prices and stock on them, the photos’ pixels (size, overlays, watermarks), your verified domain, your shipping and tax settings, or Google’s policy reviews.
• Google product categories are checked for their form (an ID or a full path, not both), not against each of the taxonomy’s categories.
• Feeds up to 200 MB and 200,000 products are read; split a larger feed by category or brand. A .bz2 archive needs unpacking on your computer first.
• A spreadsheet that shows a GTIN as 8.9E+12 has already lost its last digits in a CSV or TSV saved from it; the check reports it, but the number must be typed again.
• Without a pass, the page shows every count and the first problem types, products and attributes (up to 10 each); the full lists and the downloads need a Pro pass.
• Google changes the specification from time to time. When Merchant Center reports something this page doesn’t, follow Merchant Center.

Privacy

On this device; its files download once

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot. The spreadsheet reader (SheetJS) and the PDF engine download from this site the first time a workbook or a report needs them. Your feed is read on your device and never uploaded.