Google Shopping Feed Glossary

The availability attribute states whether a product can be bought right now, with the values in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder and backorder. The value must match what the landing page shows; a mismatch is one of the most common reasons for disapproval. For preorder and backorder, availability_date tells Google when the product will ship.

The brand attribute names the manufacturer's brand of a product and is required for almost all new products; exceptions are books, movies and music recordings. It must be the brand shoppers know from the product itself, not the shop name, and is limited to 70 characters. Google uses brand together with GTIN and MPN to identify products and match them across sellers.

A Comparison Shopping Service is a price comparison provider that places Shopping ads on Google Search on behalf of merchants. In the European Economic Area and Switzerland, Shopping ads run through a CSS: Google Shopping is one of them, and merchants can also use third-party CSSs, whose name then appears in the ad as By [CSS]. This setup follows the European Commission's 2017 decision on Google Shopping.

Custom labels are five free-text attributes, custom_label_0 to custom_label_4, with up to 100 characters each that carry the merchant's own logic such as margin, bestseller status or season. Shoppers never see them. Their only purpose is segmentation in Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, where product groups and listing groups can be built on them to steer bids and budgets.

The description attribute holds the product description with up to 5,000 characters. It should describe the product itself, its features and its use, and must match the landing page; promotional text, links and HTML are not allowed. Google also matches search queries against the description, so relevant details there widen the searches a product can appear for.

A disapproval is Google's decision that a product violates data requirements or policies and may not be shown. Merchant Center lists the reason as an item issue in the diagnostics section, for example a price mismatch, a wrong availability or a landing page that does not load. Warnings, by contrast, keep the product live with limited performance, and account-level issues can suspend the whole account.

The Feed Check is FeedOptimizer.AI's free analysis of a Google Shopping feed. It connects to the Merchant Center account, reads the product data and returns a Feed Score with a grade for every product plus a report on the feed as a whole, without a CSV upload, a sales call or a credit card. The result shows where the product data loses the most points and which fixes matter first.

The feed_label attribute groups the products of a data source under a label of up to 20 characters, letters, digits, hyphens and underscores only. It replaced the target country as the feed setting in 2022; a country code such as DE or US is the common convention, but any value works. Shopping and Performance Max campaigns select their products by feed label, and the same id under two feed labels counts as two separate offers.

Feed rules are transformations that Merchant Center applies to product data after upload and before processing. A rule can set an attribute to a fixed value, take the value from another data source or column, or modify an existing value, for example by appending text. They are configured per attribute in the data source settings and apply to every product that matches their conditions.

The Feed Score is FeedOptimizer.AI's own metric, not a Google term: a value from 0 to 100 for every product, calculated from six weighted components of the product data, title 25 percent, description 20, attributes 20, product details 15, product highlights 10 and Google product category 10, multiplied by a completeness factor that lowers the score when whole data areas are empty. Scores below 40 count as critical, 40 to 70 as a warning and 70 or more as good, and each score maps to a grade from A to F. It measures content quality only, not clicks, disapprovals or prices.

Free listings are unpaid product listings that Google shows on the Shopping tab and on other Google surfaces such as Search, Images and Lens. They require a Merchant Center account with product data and follow the same data and policy requirements as Shopping ads, but no advertising budget. Google introduced them broadly in 2020.

Google Merchant Center is the free Google platform where merchants upload their product data and control how their products appear on Google. It is the data source for Shopping ads, Performance Max campaigns and free listings. Products get in through a data source such as a feed file, an API connection or a shop system integration, and every product is checked against Google's data requirements and policies before it is shown.

The Google product category is Google's own taxonomy of several thousand product categories, submitted through the google_product_category attribute as a numeric ID or as the full path, for example Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses. Google assigns a category automatically if none is provided; a submitted category helps Google classify the product correctly and apply the right category-specific requirements. Only values from Google's taxonomy are valid.

The GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) is the globally unique product number printed as a barcode on the packaging, submitted through the gtin attribute with 8, 12, 13 or 14 digits (EAN, UPC, JAN, ISBN, ITF-14). Google requires it for every product that has a GTIN assigned by the manufacturer and validates the check digit and the GS1 prefix. A missing GTIN limits how the product is shown; an invalid or reused GTIN leads to disapproval.

The item_group_id attribute groups all variants of one product, for example the sizes and colors of a shirt, under a shared value while each variant keeps its own id. Google then treats them as one product with options instead of many unrelated listings. It is required for products with variants in several countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The link attribute points to the product's landing page, the page a shopper reaches after clicking the ad or listing. It must lead directly to the product, load correctly for Google's crawler, use the verified and claimed website domain and show the same price and availability as the feed. Redirects to a different domain, blocked pages and mismatches between page and feed lead to disapproval.

The MPN (Manufacturer Part Number) is the number a manufacturer uses to identify a specific product, submitted through the mpn attribute. Together with brand it identifies products that have no GTIN, for example custom-made items or manufacturer-specific parts. If a product has neither a GTIN nor an MPN, identifier_exists must be set to no; otherwise Google flags the missing identifier.

Performance Max is a Google Ads campaign type, introduced in 2021, that serves ads across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps from a single campaign. For retail it uses the Merchant Center product data and automated bidding; listing groups decide which products take part, for example by custom label or product type, but there are no manual bids per product. The quality of the feed directly shapes which searches the products can match.

The price attribute is the regular price of a product including currency, for example 19.99 EUR, and must match the price on the landing page. The sale_price attribute carries a temporarily reduced price, optionally limited by sale_price_effective_date. Google shows the sale price and can display the crossed-out regular price when the reduction is between 5 and 90 percent and the regular price was charged long enough beforehand.

The primary feed is the main data source that creates products in Merchant Center. Every product must exist in a primary feed with its required attributes before any other source can add data to it. In Merchant Center Next the same thing is called the primary product data source.

Product details are structured specifications submitted through the product_detail attribute, each with a section name, an attribute name and a value, for example Technical > Battery life > 12 hours. They cover characteristics that no standard attribute captures and appear in the product details of Shopping listings. The attribute can be submitted multiple times per product.

A product feed is a structured file or data stream that lists one product per row with its attributes: id, title, description, link, image_link, price, availability and more. Merchant Center reads it as a data source, typically a TSV or XML file, a Google Sheet, an API upload or a shop platform connection. The attributes in the feed decide which searches a product can appear for and whether it passes Google's checks.

Product highlights are short bullet points submitted through the product_highlights attribute, between 2 and 10 per product with up to 150 characters each. They describe the most relevant features and are shown in the product details of Shopping listings. Each highlight should be plain product information, not promotional text.

The product type is the merchant's own categorization of a product, submitted through the product_type attribute as a path with > as separator, such as Home > Kitchen > Kettles. Unlike the Google product category it is free text and not checked against a taxonomy. It is mainly used to structure Shopping and Performance Max campaigns; if several values are submitted, only the first one is used for that grouping.

A Standard Shopping campaign is the classic Google Ads campaign type for Shopping ads built on Merchant Center products. It shows ads on Google Search and the Shopping tab and lets advertisers split products into product groups with their own bids, set campaign priorities and add negative keywords. It offers more manual control than Performance Max and is often used alongside it.

The structured_title attribute submits a product title together with its origin. Its sub-attribute digital_source_type declares the title as AI-generated with the value trained_algorithmic_media, and content carries the title text itself. Google introduced it in 2024 so that merchants can use generative AI for titles while labeling that content transparently.

A supplemental feed is a secondary data source that adds or overrides attributes for products that already exist in a primary feed. It matches products through the id attribute and cannot create new products on its own. It is the standard way to add data such as custom labels or optimized titles without changing the feed that comes out of the shop system.

Title optimization is the practice of writing the title attribute so that it carries the words shoppers actually search for: brand, product type and the distinguishing details such as model, color, size or material, with the most important ones first. Google matches search queries primarily against the title and truncates long titles in ads, so the order matters. The title may hold up to 150 characters and must describe the same product as the landing page, without promotional text.