Guides

Fix product feed errors (Google Merchant troubleshooting)

Most product feeds “fail” for a small set of repeatable reasons: invalid XML, missing required fields, and values that don’t match what Merchant Center expects.

Start with this order

XML validity: fix parsing errors first (bad tags, encoding, namespaces, unescaped characters).
Required attributes: make sure every product has the basics (id, title, link, image, price, availability).
Value formatting: normalize price/currency, availability strings, URLs, and identifiers.

Broken example

This snippet often triggers issues: missing currency in price, an invalid availability value, and a URL with a literal space.

<item>
  <g:id>SKU-2002</g:id>
  <g:title>Trail Shoes</g:title>
  <g:price>79.99</g:price>
  <g:availability>in-stock</g:availability>
  <g:image_link>https://example.com/images/trail shoes.jpg</g:image_link>
</item>

The fix

Use consistent, Merchant-friendly values: add currency, use standard availability strings, and percent-encode spaces in URLs.

<item>
  <g:id>SKU-2002</g:id>
  <g:title>Trail Shoes</g:title>
  <g:price>79.99 USD</g:price>
  <g:availability>in stock</g:availability>
  <g:image_link>https://example.com/images/trail%20shoes.jpg</g:image_link>
</item>

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