Google Merchant Center and the quality of your feed

Best Practices to resolve feed errors and warnings in Google Merchant Center will be listed here by me. When you set up Google Shopping, it’s important to make sure your product data is 100% correct and fully optimized. That way, your ads are more likely to appear on Google. It increase the visibility of your brand and help you generate more sales. Wether you are running ads or relying on a Free Listings to bring in traffic, having a feed that is optimized is a must. We’ve put together a few tips to help you identify and fix common errors that might prevent an ad from serving or having to pay higher per click than you have to.

Missing / Invalid parameter

Missing / Invalid parameter

When you’re trying to set up feed parameters, there are some errors that will come up. One of them is “missing or invalid parameter name.” This means that Google couldn’t find the field that you were trying to fill out. For example, if you’re using a custom field for your product name and you’ve filled in all the information for it but still get an error about missing or invalid parameter names, then this could be because of the following reasons:

• Make sure that all custom fields are set up correctly (i.e., they appear where they should on your product page).
• Make sure all fields have values selected (i.e., don’t leave any empty). If so, take a look at our article about adding values “How do I add values?”

Missing / Invalid value

• Check that the value isn’t empty.
• Check that the value isn’t null.
• Check that the value isn’t 0 (zero).
• Check that the value isn’t a negative number.
• Check that the value isn’t a positive number; make sure it’s between -1 and 2,147,483,647 inclusive.

Duplicate values cause feed errors and warnings in Google

Duplicate values are one of the most common types of feed errors. They could be duplicate product information, such as titles, descriptions, or price. Or they could be duplicate item IDs. This is an error that you should fix as soon as possible because it will reduce your chances of appearing multiple times in Google Shopping results. It could also lead to account suspension, because Google does not want to show the same product multiple times, which clutters Google’s search engine resulting in poor customer experience.

Invalid attribute Unit price value

If you see this message, it means that the unit price value is not valid. To fix this error, specify the unit price value.

Unit price is a required attribute and must be expressed as a single number with no decimals (for example, 12). The unit price can’t exceed 100000 and must be between 0 and 100000.

Bad URL in image link attribute

Let’s say you’ve added an image to your product data feed. The image is called “my-product-image.png” and it’s hosted on your site at http://example.com/my-product-image.png.

Missing required attributes

The first error message you might receive is “Missing required attributes”, which means that one or more of the required attributes (product name, brand, category, and description) are missing from your feed.

The product name and brand are required for all products. The category is required only if you’re submitting a product in a category that’s different than “All Products”. The description will always be necessary to include; it could be as little as a few words or several paragraphs long depending on how much information you want to provide about each product.

Take care of them as soon as possible.

Once you have addressed these issues and the errors and warnings are no longer present, you will be able to view your new feed status by clicking “Diagnostics” tab within your Google Merchant Center account.

You should also check that there aren’t any red exclamation marks (!) next to any of your products in Google Merchant Center. If there are, click on that product’s name to see what caused it.

Best Ways to fix error messages and warnings in Google

I have written other article where I discuss in detail what are some of the best ways to address the issues. You could use supplement feeds or use Feed rules where possible, also automatic improvements function can be utilized in combination with all the other tools. If you found this article helpful and were able to resolve feed errors and warnings in Google, please share it with those who you think may benefit from it.