Google Merchant Center Product Data Quality Issues: How to Fix Them

Product data quality issues are distinct from policy violations. Where a policy violation reflects a decision Google has made about what is acceptable on Shopping, a data quality issue reflects a mismatch between what your feed says and what Google can verify about your products. Both can trigger warnings, account restrictions, or suspension.

What Google Checks in Your Feed

Google's systems crawl your landing pages and compare them against the data in your feed. They check that the price in your feed matches the price on your page, that the product title corresponds to the actual product, that images are clear and show the correct item, and that availability is accurate. Any consistent gap between feed data and landing page content raises a quality flag.

Price Mismatch

Price mismatch is the most common data quality issue. Your feed shows one price and your landing page shows another. This happens most often when prices are updated in your store but the feed has not refreshed, or when regional pricing is not correctly handled in your feed settings. Fix it by ensuring your feed updates at least daily and that the fetch URL reflects current pricing. If you use scheduled fetches, check the frequency setting in Merchant Center under Products > Feeds.

Title and Description Accuracy

Titles that include attributes the product does not actually have, such as color names that do not match the product images, or model numbers that are wrong, create data quality signals. Review your titles against your actual product pages and correct any discrepancies. Google's product title guidelines recommend including brand, product type, key attributes (color, size, material), and model number in a consistent format.

Image Issues

Images that are too small (under 100x100px for non-apparel), show the wrong product, include watermarks or promotional text, or have white borders that make the product hard to see all create quality problems. Replace any images that fail Google's image guidelines. Use the Diagnostics tab in Merchant Center to see which specific products have image warnings.

How GMCSuspension.com Helps

Our audit tool checks all 52 policy and data quality requirements against your feed and landing pages. For data quality issues specifically, it identifies price mismatches, title inconsistencies, and image problems with enough detail to act on each one directly. Start your audit at gmcsuspension.com.