Feed errors cause product disapprovals which reduce your Shopping ad inventory. The Diagnostics tab in Merchant Center shows every error type with the affected product count. Here is how to resolve the most common ones.
GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers: barcodes, UPCs, EANs, ISBNs) are required for branded products sold by multiple retailers. If your product has a barcode, include the GTIN in your feed. If your product is custom or handmade with no GTIN, set identifier_exists: false in your feed. Do not leave the GTIN field empty for branded products or submit a made-up number.
The price in your feed must match the price displayed on the product page for the same variant (size, color). If you have sales or promotional pricing, ensure the feed reflects the current sale price. If your website shows prices dynamically (e.g. logged-in vs. logged-out), Google crawls as a guest. Test your product page in an incognito window to see what Google sees.
Common image errors: image too small (minimum 100x100px for non-apparel, 250x250px recommended), image with promotional overlay text (not allowed on the main image), image on non-white background (required for main image). Fix the images at the source and update your feed URLs to point to the corrected images.
For apparel: color, size, gender, and age group are required. For electronics: brand and MPN (Manufacturer Part Number) are required when no GTIN is available. Check the Google Shopping attribute reference for your product category and ensure all required attributes are present in your feed.
If shipping costs are not configured in Merchant Center (under Settings > Shipping), products may be disapproved for missing shipping information. Configure at least one shipping service that covers your primary market. If your website shows free shipping, configure free shipping in Merchant Center to match.
If your website uses schema.org Product markup, the prices and availability in the markup must match the feed and the visible page. Mismatches between any two of these three data sources (feed, markup, visible page) trigger a crawled price mismatch error.
The GMCSuspension.com audit checks your store against 52 policy requirements including feed-specific validations. Run the audit before submitting products to Merchant Center to identify issues proactively rather than after disapproval.