The Merchant Center product feed: the foundation of every Google Shopping campaign
The product feed is the file in Google Merchant Center that describes each product to Google: title, description, GTIN, price and availability. Without a correct feed, a Google Shopping campaign has nothing to bid on. Here are the mandatory fields and the most common errors that pull your products out of the auction.
An online store with 4,000 products came to us with a Google Shopping campaign that spent money but sold almost nothing. The cause was not the budget or the bidding. Out of 4,000 products, only 900 were approved in Merchant Center. The other 3,100 were silently disapproved and never entered the auction. The campaign looked like it was running, but it was bidding on a quarter of the catalogue. The problem was in the feed, not in the account.
This is the uncomfortable truth about Google Shopping: the campaign is just the tip. The foundation is the product feed. If the feed is weak, no bidding strategy will save you.
What a product feed actually is
The product feed is a structured file, uploaded to Google Merchant Center, that describes every item in your store in a language Google understands. Each row is a product. Each column is an attribute: title, description, price, stock, image, code. Google reads this file and decides, product by product, which searches you can appear on and whether you are eligible to appear at all.
An important distinction: Merchant Center is the platform, the feed is the content. You can have the account perfectly configured, but if the feed has wrong or missing fields, your products are invisible. Google does not guess what you sell, it reads exactly what you give it in the feed.
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Frequently asked questions
What is a product feed in Google Merchant Center?
The product feed is a structured file, uploaded to Google Merchant Center, that describes each product in your store to Google. Each row is a product, and the columns are the attributes: title, description, price, availability, image, GTIN. Google reads this file to decide which searches you can appear on in Google Shopping and whether the product is eligible to appear at all. Without a correct feed, a Shopping campaign has nothing to bid on.
What fields are mandatory in a product feed?
The core fields Google requires are: id (unique identifier), title, description, link (product page), image_link (main image), price (VAT included), availability, and for branded products GTIN plus brand. If any of these is missing or wrong, the product can be disapproved. Title and price are the most important, because Google uses them directly to match searches and to check consistency with the site.
Why are my products disapproved in Merchant Center?
The most common causes are: the feed price differs from the product page price, images have text, a logo or a watermark, branded products are missing a GTIN, the feed availability does not match the site stock, or the site lacks a return policy, terms and conditions or an HTTPS certificate. A disapproved product does not appear in Google Shopping at all, so every disapproval means budget bidding on an incomplete catalogue.
How do I write a product title correctly in the feed?
The product title is the most important field in the feed, and Google gives the most weight to the first 30 characters. The formula that works is brand, product type, key attribute (size, colour, model), in that order, for example Nike Air Max 90 men black 43. Avoid fancy names and promotional text, because the product needs to be found by what the customer searches for, not by what you named it internally.
Do I need a GTIN for every product?
For branded products, yes. The GTIN is the product's unique global code, the EAN on the packaging, and Google expects it so it can match your product with identical products in other stores. Without it, visibility of branded products drops significantly. For products without a barcode, such as handmade or own-brand items, you correctly declare no GTIN and use brand plus MPN instead. What you must never do is leave both empty.
At DAFE Digital we manage campaigns for you. Same budget, better profitability, no optimisations to handle yourself.
What works on an e-commerce account with €5,000/month doesn't translate directly to an account with €500. Your context, history and objectives matter. We manage Google Ads, Meta Ads and LinkedIn Ads with a focus on real profitability, not activity.
Adela Mincea
Performance Marketer · Fondatoare DAFE Digital · Formator ANC
Adela is a Performance Marketer with 10+ years of paid media across Europe, the US and Asia. She founded DAFE Digital in 2023 after agency roles in London and Hong Kong, in-house work inside client organisations, and independent consulting across 27+ industries.
