Common Product Feed Errors

This guide outlines the most frequent errors found in product feeds and explains how they are handled by SharpFeed. It’s distinguished between feed-level errors (that stop analysis) and field-level errors (that appear in your audit report).

SharpFeed separates issues into three main levels:

• Mandatory: Required by Google to publish your products
• Organic Impact: Important for SEO and free listings
• Feed Accuracy: Ensures data is valid and consistent

1. Feed Errors That Block Analysis

These errors prevent SharpFeed from reading or parsing the file.
They usually occur before any audit starts, meaning no product data can be analyzed.

Common blocking issues

Tip: If your analysis fails to start, check your file’s format and encoding first.
You can open it with a text editor like VS Code or a spreadsheet tool to confirm it’s readable.

2. Missing Required Fields

Fields like id, title, price, and availability are mandatory.
If they’re missing or completely empty, SharpFeed flags them as “Required field is missing”.

Examples

• Missing title column → "title" is missing from the feed.
• Empty price values → "price" is present but missing values for 102 products.

Impact: Required

3. Incorrect Field Formats

Some fields must follow a strict format to be accepted by Google.
SharpFeed validates these using built-in rules.

Examples

• price: 15USD instead of 15.00 USD
• shipping_weight: 200g instead of 200 g
• product_highlight: highlight exceeds 150 characters

Impact: Feed Accuracy or Organic Impact, depending on the field

4. Values Too Short or Too Long

SharpFeed checks that field values stay within the recommended range.
Too short means poor SEO context; too long may cause truncation in listings.

Examples

• title: only 3 characters → too short
• description: over 5,000 characters → too long

Impact: Organic Impact

5. Invalid URLs

All URLs must start with http:// or https://.
If HTTP status checks are enabled, SharpFeed also tests live accessibility.

Examples

• image_link: example.com/image.jpg (missing protocol)
• link: returns 404 status code

Impact:

• Required for link, canonical_link, image_link
• Organic Impact for lifestyle_image_link, additional_image_link

6. GTIN and MPN Logic Errors

Google requires either GTIN or MPN for product identification.

Examples

• Both gtin and mpn empty → Error
• Only one provided → OK
• Invalid GTIN format (letters instead of digits) → Error

Impact: Required / Feed Accuracy

7. Invalid or Missing Categories

google_product_category must match an official Google ID or taxonomy path.

Example

• google_product_category: 999999 → invalid
• Missing value for all products → Flagged

Impact: Feed Accuracy

8. Item Group Conflicts

The item_group_id field must group variants, not duplicate product IDs.

Example

• A product has id = 123 and item_group_id = 123 → Invalid

Impact: Feed Accuracy

9. Out-of-Stock or Inconsistent Availability

Products with availability = out_of_stock are valid but may impact visibility.
If your landing page shows “in stock” but the feed says otherwise, SharpFeed warns you.

Example

• 120 products marked as out_of_stock but active on-site → Warning

Impact: Organic Impact

10. Feed Accuracy and Data Consistency

Some fields are not mandatory but recommended for better performance.
SharpFeed checks for technical consistency (numeric ranges, date formats, etc.).

Examples

• sale_price_effective_date: not ISO 8601 (2024/12/01 instead of 2024-12-01T00:00-00:00/2024-12-15T23:59-00:00)
• shipping_weight: value below 0 or above allowed range
• color: contains commas (invalid format)

Impact: Feed Accuracy