What is Merchant feed?

What gets items disapproved

• Price or availability in the feed not matching the landing page
• Missing GTIN or brand where the category requires them
• Landing pages that 404, redirect, or require a login
• Images with promotional overlays, watermarks or borders
• Policies missing from the site — contact details, returns and refund terms are checked

The site requirements people miss

Merchant Center policy requires visible contact information, a refund and returns policy, and terms — on the website, reachable, before an account is approved. Sites are refused for the absence of a policy page far more often than for feed errors.

Keeping it in sync

Generate the feed from the same source as the site rather than exporting it by hand. Any process where a person updates a price in two places produces a mismatch eventually, and the mismatch is what gets items disapproved.

Where this is covered in depth

A definition can only go so far. The e-commerce SEO checklist, in the order the checks actually matter covers this properly — 3 minutes, free, no email required.

Who wrote this

Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada and Pakistan. These definitions come from client work rather than from a content brief — where an entry describes a mistake, it is usually one found on a real site. More about how I work.