Google Shopping Product Feed Guide: Merchant Center Requirements

The CIQRA team30 September 2026 8 min read

To get products into Google Shopping and free listings, you create a Google Merchant Center account, send it product data (through a feed file, a Google Sheet, the Merchant API, or by letting Google crawl product structured data on your site), and keep that data matching your product pages. Every product needs at least an id, title, description, link, image_link, availability and price, plus brand, GTIN or MPN and condition where they apply, and shipping costs in many countries. Most disapprovals come from data that disagrees with the landing page, above all price and availability.

Free listings and Shopping ads use the same product data

Merchant Center is the single place where your product data lives, whether you pay for Shopping ads or not. According to Google's Merchant Center Help, free listings let products appear at no cost on Google Search, Google Maps, Gemini, YouTube, the Shopping tab, Google Images and Google Lens. In most cases the free listings feature is turned on by default, and new accounts are opted in. Google notes that this setting only gives permission to show products; it does not guarantee they will be shown, because matching depends on the data you provide.

That last point is the reason product data quality matters so much. The same fields that decide whether a product is approved also decide which searches it can match. If you are still choosing where to sell, our online selling guide for small businesses compares channels; this post assumes you have picked Google.

The required product attributes

Google's product data specification is the reference for every attribute. The table below summarizes the core fields and the limits Google publishes for them.

AttributeRequired?What Google asks for
idYesUnique per product, max 50 characters. Use the product's SKU where possible and keep the ID the same when you update data.
titleYesPlain text, max 150 characters, matching the landing page. No promotional text such as "free shipping" and no all-capital letters. For variants, include the distinguishing color or size.
descriptionYesPlain text, max 5,000 characters, accurately describing the product.
linkYesThe product landing page on your verified domain, starting with http or https.
image_linkYesThe main product image, crawlable by Googlebot. No watermarks, promotional text, borders, placeholders or upscaled thumbnails.
availabilityYesOne of in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder or backorder. Preorder and backorder also need availability_date.
priceYesNumeric value plus ISO 4217 currency code, for example 15.00 USD, matching the landing page, structured data and checkout.
brandFor new products (except movies, books and music recordings)Max 70 characters. Use your own brand only if you make the product or sell private label.
gtinStrongly recommended if availableThe manufacturer's barcode number: UPC (12 digits), EAN (13), JAN, ISBN or ITF-14.
mpnOnly if the product has no manufacturer-assigned GTINMax 70 alphanumeric characters, and only an MPN assigned by the manufacturer.
conditionIf the product is used or refurbishednew, refurbished or used. Optional for new products.
shippingDepends on the countryShipping costs are required in many countries, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany and France. You can set them in Merchant Center shipping settings or with the shipping attribute.

Product identifiers: brand, GTIN and MPN

Identifiers are where many catalogs go wrong. Google's guidance is to submit the GTIN if the manufacturer assigned one, to submit an MPN only when you are sure it is correct, and never to guess or invent a value. The specification states plainly that a product with an incorrect MPN will be disapproved. If a product genuinely has no brand, GTIN or MPN, such as custom or handmade goods, the identifier_exists attribute set to no tells Google so. Google still asks you to provide whichever identifiers you do have.

Images: a new minimum size

Google's specification says it has announced a new requirement of at least 500 x 500 pixels for all product images, with enforcement beginning January 31, 2027. Accepted formats include JPEG, WebP, PNG, non-animated GIF, BMP and TIFF. If your catalog has older, smaller images, now is a good time to replace them rather than upscale them, since upscaled images are not allowed either.

Common reasons products get disapproved

  • Price mismatch. Google's help page on mismatched prices explains that Googlebot crawls your landing pages and compares the price in your data source with the price on the page or in your structured data. When they differ, the product may be disapproved, and repeated mismatches may lead to account suspension.
  • Price added by JavaScript after page load. Googlebot reads the HTML your server returns. If the price is inserted dynamically after the page loads, Google says this will trigger an error.
  • Availability mismatch. Availability must agree across the feed, landing page, checkout and structured data. An out-of-stock product must still show its price on the page.
  • Sale price timing. If you use sale_price, set sale_price_effective_date with the correct time zone. A wrong start date or time zone shows an incorrect price.
  • Landing page problems. Google's landing page requirements say the page must show the product's title, description, image, price, currency, availability and a buy button, matching your data. Pages that fall short can get products or the account disapproved.

Structured data vs a feed

There are two ways to tell Google about a product, and they work best together.

Structured data is schema.org Product and Offer markup in your product pages. Google's Merchant Center Help describes two uses for it: a "website crawl" data source, where Google finds products on your store and adds them to Merchant Center automatically, and automatic item updates, which correct price, sale price, availability and condition when your submitted data is out of date. Google Search Central's merchant listing documentation adds that the same markup can make pages eligible for merchant listing experiences in Search, and that a price greater than zero is required for them.

A feed is a file, Google Sheet or API connection you control. Merchant Center accepts .txt, .xml or .tsv files up to 4 GB, fetched from a URL (every 24 hours by default), sent by SFTP or uploaded by hand. Google Sheets sources sync every 24 hours by default. For catalogs that change often, Google recommends the Merchant API.

Which should you rely on? Automatic crawling is the simplest start, but Google notes it is not compatible with local inventory ads or free local listings, and that a product managed through another method stops being updated from crawled data. A feed gives you explicit control over every attribute. In practice, most stores send a feed and keep accurate structured data on every product page, so the two sources confirm each other.

Keeping price and stock in sync

Google is explicit that automatic item updates are a safety net, not a sync method. Its help page says they are designed to fix sporadic problems for a small percentage of products, may not work for products whose price or availability changes more than once a day, and may be switched off if the number of mismatches becomes too large. The practical rules:

  1. Generate the feed from the same database that renders your product pages, so the price has one source.
  2. Schedule feed fetches at least daily, and move to the Merchant API if prices or stock change several times a day.
  3. Render price and availability in the server HTML and in Product structured data, not only through client-side scripts.
  4. Show prices in the currency of the target country, and use unambiguous symbols such as C$ where "$" could mean more than one currency.
  5. Check the Needs attention tab in Merchant Center after every catalog change. Google re-crawls disapproved products over the following hours or days and reapproves them once the price matches.

Once products are live, measure what they earn. Our guide to server-side tracking for online stores covers sending purchase conversions to Google Ads and GA4 reliably.

Checklist before your first upload

  • Merchant Center account created and your website verified.
  • Every product has a stable, unique id (50 characters or fewer), ideally the SKU.
  • Titles under 150 characters, with no promotional text, and with variant details.
  • Main images at least 500 x 500 pixels, crawlable, with no watermarks or overlays.
  • Availability uses one of the four supported values; availability_date is set for preorders and backorders.
  • Price and currency match the page, the structured data and checkout.
  • Brand set for new products; real GTINs where they exist; MPNs only from the manufacturer; identifier_exists set to no only when identifiers truly do not exist.
  • Condition set for used and refurbished items.
  • Shipping costs configured for every country you target, and a return policy added.
  • Product and Offer structured data on every product page, rendered in the server HTML.
  • Feed refresh schedule set, and someone owns the Needs attention queue.

Where CIQRA fits

CIQRA Commerce lists Google Shopping among its sales channels, alongside the Meta catalog. It also provides structured data (JSON-LD) for products, prices, shipping and returns, the kind of markup Google compares with your submitted data.

Sources

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The CIQRA team

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