Google Shopping feed errors: the common ones and how to fix them

Most Google Shopping feed errors fall into six groups: price or availability that doesn’t match the website, missing or wrong product identifiers, image problems, landing pages Google can’t reach, policy disapprovals, and missing UK shipping settings. Fix each one where the data starts, in your shop’s product records, not by patching the feed, and most clear within a day or two of the next feed update. A one-off cleanup of a small catalogue is usually a few days’ work; the ongoing job is keeping the shop’s data honest.

Everything below is checked against Google’s Merchant Center help pages, listed under sources. Google changes its requirements from time to time, so treat the help pages as the final word.

Why fixing at source matters

Your feed is a copy of your product data. WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento all generate it from the products you’ve entered, usually through an app, plugin or extension that sends it to Merchant Center.

Feed tools and Merchant Center rules let you override values in the feed: rewrite a title, force a price, hide a field. It’s tempting, because it’s quick. But every override is a second version of the truth. The next time someone changes a price in the shop, the feed and the website disagree again, and Google notices.

So the rule is simple: fix it in the shop’s product records, let the feed pick it up, and keep feed rules for genuine formatting jobs only.

The common errors at a glance

Price and availability mismatches

Google checks your feed against your product pages. If the price or stock status differs, the product is disapproved. Google lists the usual causes: delays between a website change and the next feed update, incorrect structured data (the hidden code on the page that tells Google the price), crawlers seeing a different price from customers, and sale prices with wrong dates or time zones.

For the UK, Google says the price must include VAT, and the landing page price must match it. Prices go in the feed as a number plus the currency code, such as 24.99 GBP, with no more than two decimal places.

For availability, Google accepts in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder and backorder. Preorder and backorder need an availability date that also appears on the page. A greyed-out or missing buy button with in_stock in the feed is a mismatch.

Fixing it in the shop

• WooCommerce: check the theme or a plugin isn’t showing a different price from the product’s own price field, for example a “price from” display on variable products. Turn on stock management so availability comes from real stock levels.
• Shopify: check the variant the feed sends is the one the product page shows by default, and that inventory tracking is on for each variant.
• Magento: watch for catalogue price rules, customer group prices and tax display settings that show customers a different price from the one exported. Make sure the feed extension reads the price including VAT.

Google’s automatic item updates can correct price, sale price, availability and condition from your page’s structured data. Google is clear it’s a safety net for occasional problems, not a replacement for keeping the feed up to date, and it may not keep up with values that change more than once a day.

Missing or incorrect GTINs and identifiers

A GTIN is the product’s barcode number, usually the EAN on UK products. Google recommends submitting it for every product that has one from its manufacturer, and says products with missing or incorrect GTINs may have limited visibility. It also says: only provide a GTIN if you’re sure it’s correct.

If you make the product yourself, sell it as your own brand, or it’s a one-off, it won’t have a GTIN and you don’t need one. Submit the brand and MPN (the manufacturer’s part number) instead.

Fix this in the product records. In WooCommerce, keep it in one barcode or GTIN field per product or variation and check the feed plugin reads that field. In Shopify, use the barcode field on each variant. In Magento, it’s a product attribute that the feed extension needs mapping to. Never make up barcodes or reuse one across products: an invented number is worse than none.

Image problems

Image size rules are tightening. The old minimums were 100 by 100 pixels (250 by 250 for clothing); from 31 January 2027 every product image must be at least 500 by 500 pixels, or the product is disapproved. Google recommends 1500 by 1500 or more, and caps files at 16MB. Check your smallest images now. The common disapprovals are about content rather than size:

• Promotional overlays: “sale”, “free delivery”, prices or logos laid over the photo.
• Watermarks, including stock photo watermarks.
• Placeholders such as “image coming soon”.
• Borders, or other products in the shot that aren’t included.

The fix is a clean main image on each product in the shop itself, with lifestyle or promotional images kept for secondary positions. If a theme adds badges to images, make sure they’re added on the page by the theme, not burned into the image file.

Landing page issues

Google needs to load each product’s page. Google lists the usual blockers: page not found (404), too many redirects, server errors, DNS problems and pages blocked by robots.txt.

These often follow a site change. Products deleted but still in the feed, URLs changed after a redesign or migration, a staging site’s “block search engines” setting left on after launch, or a security plugin that blocks Google’s crawler. Remove retired products from the feed, redirect changed URLs, and check robots.txt. Google’s URL Inspection tool in Search Console shows what Google sees. The free website health check catches some of the basics, such as HTTPS and search settings.

UK shipping, tax and policy disapprovals

Shipping

Google lists the UK among the countries where shipping costs are required for Shopping ads and free listings. It recommends setting them in Merchant Center’s shipping settings, and using the feed’s shipping field only to override them for specific products. The costs must match what customers pay at checkout, and if you don’t deliver everywhere in the UK, only submit costs for the areas you do.

Tax

Google’s tax attribute is for US sales tax only, and Google says not to use it for VAT or when targeting other countries. UK shops include VAT in the price instead. Feeds built from US templates sometimes include a tax field; remove it.

Policy disapprovals

Some products are restricted by Google’s policies, and some disapprovals are about the business rather than the product. Google’s misrepresentation policy covers hidden fees, unclear payment or return terms, and missing business information, and serious cases can mean account suspension without warning. Make sure the website clearly shows who you are, how to contact you, delivery costs, and your returns policy. Then request a review in Merchant Center.

How the product feed fixer helps

The free product feed fixer takes a product export from WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento or a spreadsheet, and returns a file in Google’s format with every change listed. It runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded.

• Prices in mixed formats become the 24.99 GBP style Google expects.
• Stock as numbers or words becomes in_stock, out_of_stock or preorder.
• Barcodes are checked against their check digit; invalid ones are flagged, not guessed.
• Plain http addresses stay unchanged until you confirm that the https destination works. Blank product condition needs your choice of the actual condition; it is never assumed to be new. Missing required fields and duplicate IDs are listed by row. Keep the original file, review the before-and-after change log and download unresolved rows before publishing.

Use it to find what’s wrong and how widespread it is, then fix those products in the shop. It can’t see your landing pages, your shipping settings or your Merchant Center account, so it won’t catch mismatches or policy problems.

Where to start

Open Merchant Center, sort the product issues by how many products each affects, and work from the top. Fix the first issue in the shop on a handful of products, wait for the next feed update, and confirm they clear before doing the rest. Run your export through the feed fixer to catch identifier and formatting problems in one pass.

If the errors keep coming back, the problem is usually how the shop handles prices, stock or variants, and that’s a build question. I can look at it as part of a build or integration project, or keep it in check on a care plan.