How to Validate a Product Feed Before Uploading to Merchant Center

Merchant Center will tell you what is wrong with your feed — after it has processed it, disapproved products and stopped them from showing. A validator gives you the same kind of feedback before you submit, while fixing is still quick and nothing has gone offline. The free SeoSpidie feed validator checks every product against the Merchant Center product specification.

Step 1: Provide your feed

Enter the URL where your feed is hosted, or paste the feed content directly. XML feeds are the most common; make sure you check the exact file Merchant Center will fetch.

Step 2: Run the validation

The validator reads each product and checks it for:

• Missing required attributes — id, title, description, link, image_link, availability, price
• Format errors — prices without currency, invalid availability values, malformed URLs
• Length problems — titles over 150 characters, descriptions over 5,000
• Identifier issues — missing brand or GTIN information where expected
• Duplicate IDs

Step 3: Read the results by severity

Fix in this order:

1. Errors in required attributes — these products would be rejected.
2. Format errors — values Google cannot parse.
3. Recommendations — missing optional attributes that would improve performance, such as additional images or product type.

If the same error affects hundreds of products, the cause is usually one template or one field mapping. Fix it at the source rather than product by product.

Step 4: Fix and re-validate

Correct the data in your shop or spreadsheet, regenerate the feed and run the validator again until the errors are gone. For barcode errors, use the GTIN validator; for broken images, the image URL checker; for category values, the product category finder.

Step 5: Upload with confidence

Once the feed is clean, submit it in Merchant Center or let the scheduled fetch pick it up. Then check Merchant Center diagnostics a few hours later. A validator cannot see everything — Google also checks your landing pages, policies and images — but you will have removed the most common reasons for rejection.

What a validator cannot catch

• Landing page mismatches — whether the page shows the same price and availability. Spot-check a few products manually.
• Image content — whether photos contain promotional overlays or watermarks.
• Policy issues — restricted products or claims.

For a full guide to these, read how to fix common Merchant Center feed errors.

Make validation a routine

Validate after every catalogue import, platform update or template change. Many feed problems are introduced by a single change that nobody connected to the feed — a new theme that moves the price, a plugin that renames a field.

Related guides

• Pinterest Shopping Catalog Setup Guide for Small Online Stores
• How to Generate a Pinterest Product Feed From Your Website
• Google Merchant Center Product Feed Requirements Explained

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Frequently asked questions