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 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.