Google Stepping Up Merchant Feed Enforcement

Got some slop in your Google product feed? Now’s the time to revisit all those pesky identifiers and tidy things up. Google is upping its enforcement of product feeds in Google Merchant Center again. Google began this process last year by disapproving products without unique product identifiers such as GTIN (which also must be conform […]

Chat with SearchBot

Got some slop in your Google product feed? Now’s the time to revisit all those pesky identifiers and tidy things up. Google is upping its enforcement of product feeds in Google Merchant Center again.

Google began this process last year by disapproving products without unique product identifiers such as GTIN (which also must be conform to standard specifications), MPN and brand and demoting products with incorrect usage of the identifier_exists attribute.

The identifier_exists attribute was added last year for merchants selling custom goods that don’t have unique identifiers like brand names or MPN codes. In categories where unique product identifiers are required but don’t exist for an item, you enter “False” for the ‘identifier exists’ attribute. “False” should only be used only for custom products and not when you can’t locate the proper identifiers for a product.

Now Google will begin to disapprove products with incorrect GTIN, MPN and brand identifiers and globally demote products with incorrect identifier_exists attribute

Begin reviewing the warnings and disaprovals in the Data Quality and Data Feeds tabs of your Google Merchant Feed. Pending product disapprovals that show up as warnings now will eventually show as errors when the new enforcement takes effect.


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Ginny Marvin
Contributor
Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, MarTech and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

Get the must-read newsletter for search marketers.