Merchant Feed Checker and Fixer
Find common errors Google rejects in your product feed, and get a corrected copy.
Google Merchant Center feeds: tab-separated, CSV or XML · change log
What it does
Check your Google Merchant Center feed before Google sees it. You get a list of every problem, product by product, in plain words, and a corrected copy of the file with the routine mistakes already fixed: prices like "12,99 EUR", "In Stock" instead of in_stock, spaces in image links, stray whitespace. Anything that needs your own product details, such as a wrong barcode or a missing image, is pointed out for you to fix. Fixes are listed with their old and new values, so you can check them before you upload.
What you get
- A corrected feed in the format you gave it (tab-separated, CSV or XML), ready to upload.
- A change log of the values it fixed, old and new side by side.
- A problem list, one line per product, saying what's wrong, why Google cares and which of Google's rules it breaks.
- A summary showing which problems affect the most products, so you know where to start.
- Barcode checks that Merchant Center only reports after upload: wrong check digits, wrong length, store-only and coupon codes.
Best for
- A full product feed you send to Google as a file or a link (tab-separated, CSV, RSS or Atom XML, also zipped), checked before upload or after a wave of disapprovals.
- Shops and agencies that want a fixed file without signing up for a subscription.
Not for
- Supplemental or inventory-only feeds (id, price and stock only). It expects a full feed, so it will report the missing titles and images.
- Problems outside the file. It doesn't visit your product pages or images, or check policy, shipping, tax or account settings. Passing doesn't guarantee Google will approve your products.
- Google Sheets or Content API feeds; export them to a file first. A broken XML file is reported with its line and column, not repaired. CSV files with quoted header names aren't read yet.
Cost and how to start
- Open it on Apify Store and sign in, or create a free Apify account.
- Give it your feed file or a link to it (tab-separated, CSV or XML, also zipped) and start the run.
- Download the corrected feed, the change log and the problem list.
US$0.001 per product checked. Each product in the feed is charged, whatever its result. If the run cost cap cannot cover the whole feed, the run stops before checking it. Each run also has a start charge of US$0.00005 per GB of run memory, minimum one GB. There is no separate platform usage charge.
Questions
- Will it change my titles or prices?
- It makes formatting fixes: a price written the way Google wants it, a value spelled as Google expects, a link encoded, a book's 10-digit ISBN converted to 13 digits. It never shortens titles. Every fix is in the change log, so check it before you upload.
- Will this get my products approved?
- It clears the feed-format problems behind many disapprovals. Google also reviews your site, images and policies, which this doesn't check.
How we tested it
- Published feeds, common mistakes. We ran it on the Google product feeds we found published in public code repositories: clothing, furniture, perfume, food, books and more, from a handful of products to 734. The most common problems were prices with no currency (27 feeds), required details left blank (33 feeds), barcodes with a wrong check digit (9 feeds), and "null" or a web address in a price column after a spreadsheet export went wrong.
- Fixes hold up on a second check. 140 feeds got a corrected copy with at least one fix. Checking every corrected file again found nothing left to fix.
- Nothing missed on a known feed. On a 20-product feed with 12 planted mistakes, it found all 12 and raised nothing on the clean products.