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Resolving Google Shopping Feed Errors

Google Merchant Center Phone Number, Chat, and Email Contact Forms

How do I contact Google Merchant center?

You can contact Google Shopping / Merchant Center support by phone, email, or chat. Read below to find the phone number, hours of operation, email contact forms, and chat instructions.

USA Phone Number and Hours

+1-855-607-0431 or +1-866-246-6453
USA, 9 am - 8 pm ET, Monday - Friday, English, Spanish
Retrieved on Mar. 4, 2020

Current Phone Number and Hours of Operation for your Region

  1. Go to Worldwide Phone Support Information
  2. Select your country in the drop-down

Google Merchant Center Support Email Address

No email address is provided for opening a ticket. Instead, to open a written ticket, use one of the Contact Forms listed below, or the Send Message instructions that follow.

Google will respond by email from shopping-support at google.com, but this address has changed frequently over time, and you can only reply to it once a ticket has been opened. If you email this address to open a new ticket, you will get an auto-response saying it is an unmonitored address.

Chat or Send Message to Google Merchant Center

  1. Sign In to Google Merchant Center Get Help page
  2. Type phone (or anything) and click Next Step
  3. Click Disapproved feed or items (or anything) and then click Next Step
  4. Click the Chat or Email button (Call Us may also be available)
  5. Fill in the form to continue

Pro Tips and Advice

We recommend using phone support for urgent issues.

Phone support is time consuming and follow-up is difficult. For a more reliable resolution to your problem, use the contact forms below.

Expect email response time of 1-2 business days. For complex issues, expect about 3-8 correspondences to achieve a resolution to your issue, as issues go from boilerplate responses, to low-level support, up to high-level support gradually. Be aware that responses can be frustrating, especially when your ads are down. For best results, be persistent and courteous.

Links to Google Merchant Center Contact Forms

Google Merchant Center does not provide a general email address for support inquiries. Instead, to initiate an email support ticket, use one of the forms below.

Disapproved Feed Resolution Services

We provide assistance and advice and to our data feed clients on navigating Google Merchant policy disapproval, errors, and warnings.

Register Today (free trial, no credit card needed) to try our Google Shopping Data Feed service.

I submitted my feed through your system, now what?

Check the status in your Google Base account. If it says "success", then they have successfully processed the feed.

I submitted my feed, but the status doesn't appear in Google Merchant Center.

It can take 24-72 hours for processing status to appear in Google Merchant Center. Click here for more information.

Google Merchant Center status says 'invalid file name', how do I fix this?

Set the filename property in your feed settings, and make sure this exactly matches the filename configured in your Google Merchant Center account.

I emailed Google Shopping Support, but have not heard from them.

Google Shopping technical support always replies, but it can take up to two weeks to receive a reply.

How do I view the status of my data feed in Google Merchant Center?

There are three places in your Google merchant account where you can find errors and warnings for your data feed.

Log In to Google Merchant Account

  1. Log in to Google Merchant Center
  2. If you have a multi-client account, click on the Display Name of your store from the Accounts tab.

Products overview

On the Dashboard tab, look at the graph labelled Shopping ads products overview. Hover your mouse over the green line and you will see your active item count. If the count seems too low, you may have item errors. If you see a line in red, that means you have disapproved items. A yellow line means items are awaiting review. See below for more information.

Item Errors and Warnings

To view the latest item level errors/warnings for your feed, follow these instructions:

  1. Click on the Products > Feeds page
  2. Click the file name of your active feed, e.g. googlebase.zip
  3. Click on the Processing tab, if not already selected
  4. Click the errors and warnings label that looks like 1234 errors, 123 warnings. Click each message that expands out to see sample items.
  5. If there are no issues, you will only see this message:
    File pre-processing: Completed - 1234 valid / 1234 processed Basic product data completeness and correctness

Item errors and warnings are updated typically within a few minutes of running a submission to upload the data feed file. You can identify and resolve most item errors by going to Manage Feed > Validation Report in our system.

Diagnostics

Click on the Products > Diagnostics page to see all account, feed, and item-level issues related to your account. This analysis is automatically updated by Google once every 24 hours or so. Check the Latest date to see when it was last updated.

Click in the graph to see historical item counts and issues.

Click on the Account, Feeds, or Items boxes below the graph to see details on specific errors or warnings, as well as lists of affected items.

Disapproved Items

  1. Click on the Products > List page (it may be slow to load).
  2. Select Inactive from the Status drop-down to see any disapproved items. These items will have a red icon (circle with a slash) to indicate that they are disapproved.
  3. Click on the Title of an item to see the item details. A reason for disapproval may be displayed as well, but usually, it will just have a generic message saying, "Disapproved or invalid".

When there is no specific error message for a disapproved item, you must contact Google using the Disapproved accounts, feeds, or items contact form to identify and resolve disapproved items. We are unable to provide support for disapproved items.

Disapproval status is typically updated within a few hours of running a submission.

How do I resolve an "Error: Missing Attributes" message from Google Base?

You may see one of the following errors from Google Base, which may cause some or all of your products to not be processed.

  • The item is missing a required attribute.
  • We were unable to match the attributes in this dsv (delimiter separated values) data feed line to the corresponding attributes in the header (first) row.
  • You must enter an item title. *Title* is a required attribute.
  • Product name missing
  • We didn't understand the header (first) row of your file. Please make sure you're using valid attribute names.

To resolve these errors, please check the settings in your Google Base account as described in this support question.

How do I configure the shipping 'weight' attribute?
  1. Go to the Manage Feed > Define Fields page for the feed.
  2. Click 'Edit' next to the 'weight' field.
  3. Enter a Default Value, which will apply to all products. Leave blank if not applicable.
  4. Enter the name of the shipping weight field in your store catalog in the Field Name box. It may be named weight, ship-weight, or objinfo_Weight, for example.
  5. Save the settings and run a Submit task to update your listings. You can also review the Product List of the feed to make sure the weights are being retrieved properly.
What do I do if there is no status (or 'None') in Google Merchant Center?

You may encounter a problem where our system shows a successful submission, but you do not see any items uploaded in your Google Merchant Center account. It may say "None" under the "Last upload date & status" column in your Google Merchant Center account. If you see "Success" on our site, it only means that our system successfully uploaded the data feed file to them, not that they have processed the file.

To resolve this, check that the file name is exactly the same in both our site and in Google. The file name must end in .txt and it is case-sensitive. Also, remember that Google may take 24-72 hours to display the status of a recently uploaded file. If more than that time period elapses, you can contact Google.

What do I do if there I get an email saying "Data feed upload failure"?

You may occasionally receive an email from Google Base with subject, Google Base data feed file status on "file.txt": Data feed upload failure. You receive it even though you have not changed any feed settings and your feed has been working correctly. In your Google Base dashboard, you will see the following status message:

Outcome: Data feed upload failed. No items are live.   help
Number of items processed:              0
Number of inserted items:               0
Uploaded at:  Oct 19, 2008 1:40 am PDT
Processed at: Oct 19, 2008 10:11 am PDT

There would be no further details on the error message, and our system would show 'success' in the task history. This problem is usually due to a system error at Google Base. To resolve the issue, you simply have to resubmit your feed from your account.

For further information, you can view the following post in the 'Google Groups - Submitting Data Forum': Data Feed Upload Failure.

What do I do if I can't find my products in my Google Merchant Center account?

Please check the status of your data feed in your Google Merchant Center account first. It would be most helpful if you can send us a screen shot or the detailed, line-by-line error messages.

How do I resolve "No items inserted" or "Internal error" emails?

Google may send you an email saying "No Items Inserted" or "Internal error, feed was not fully processed" for your data feed. This error is usually spurious and can be ignored. You have several options:

You can also check the Google Merchant Center Forum to see if others are experiencing the same problem. If you continue to receive the same error email multiple times, contact us and we can check on your feed.

----- Sample Message ---- From: googlebase-noreply@google.com To: info@store.com Sent: Thu, November 10, 2009 8:02:31 AM Subject: Google Merchant Center data feed file status on "googlebase.txt": 0 of 1999 items inserted or Internal error, feed not fully processed or No items inserted 0 of 1999 items inserted or Internal error, feed not fully processed or No items inserted Uploaded at: November 10, 2009 2:28:42 AM PST Processed at: November 10, 2009 3:52:36 AM PST For more details on the status of your data feed, go to http://www.google.com/ merchants/showfeedsummary?fid=111111 This is a computer-generated email. Please do not reply. You can change your notification settings at http://www.google.com/ merchants/basicsettings
Problem: Submission is successful, but Google doesn't recognize feed

You can view your task results on the Manage Feed > View Results page for each data feed. If the task shows a successful submission, that means our server was able to upload the file via FTP to Google's FTP server. It does not mean Google has processed, or will ever process, the file.

If your GMA Product Feeds page does not show that the feed is processing within an hour or so, check the following settings:

  1. Check that the file name you have specified on the Manage Feed > Modify Settings page exactly matches the file name on the GMA Product Feeds page. The file name is case-sensitive.
  2. Check that the FTP Username and Password you have specified on the Manage Feed > Modify Settings page exactly matches what you have set on the GMA FTP Settings page. Both username and password are also case-sensitive.
  3. Make sure you are logged into the correct Google account. Also, if you have a multi-client account with Google, make sure you are checking the settings for the correct sub-account.
Google Shopping Products Awaiting Review Status Meaning

Occasionally, your products may be flagged for review by Google Merchant Center. When this happens, they will be removed from Google Shopping for up to two business days.

In your Google Merchant Account Dashboard, items awaiting review will appear as a yellow line in the Product Overview Graph. You can also find the status of the items in the Products Tab.

If your products have been Awaiting Review for an extended period of time, you can contact Google using their Data Feed Processing Contact Form. Google Merchant Center does not provide a phone number. You can expect 1-2 business days response time via the contact form. You can also contact Adwords phone technical support for free, but our clients have reported that they are generally not very helpful for this type of issue.

Reasons for products to be flagged for review are listed below.

  • recently registered feed
  • content changes by the merchant
  • Google's enforcement or implementation of new policies
  • data feed changes that affect the content

For more information, refer to Google's support article: What is the status of my products?

Missing Shipping Information Warning in Google Merchant Center

You may receive the following warning on the Data Feed Status page of your Google Merchant Center account:

Missing Shipping Information
 
Please specify at least one active shipping method for each targeted country, either in the 'shipping' attribute or in your account settings. Make sure that the shipping method is applicable to this item. For example, carrier-calculated rates have a limit on weight and are not applicable to heavy items. Note: Allow 15 minutes for account settings to take effect before uploading a new feed.

Potential Solutions

  • Create a shipping method for each targeted country in your GMA Shipping Settings.
  • If you already have a carrier-calculated rate set up, then some of your items may be overweight. In this case, add another shipping method for the items that are overweight.
  • You can add item-specific shipping rates to your catalog, and then those can be submitted in the feed. This requires more work, but is also much more accurate.
Resolving the "Attribute 'shipping weight' is too high" error

In your Google Merchant Center feed processing report, you may see the Attribute 'shipping weight' is too high error message with a message saying Attribute 'shipping weight' must be smaller.

According to the shipping_weight Google Feed specifications, the allowed range for imperial units is 0–2000 lbs, and for metric units is 0–1000 kgs. To fix the error, edit the item in your product catalog and set the weight lower.

If you are unable to edit the weights, we can add a rule to your feed to blank out the high shipping weight values.

If the weights are not in the correct units, we can add a rule to convert the weight units, e.g. from grams to kilograms, ounces to pounds, etc.

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