A product feed is a structured file that tells Google and Meta what you sell, at what price, with which identifiers — separate from your site’s pages entirely and read by machines, not shoppers. Getting it right the first time means the data holds up to their validation rules before it ever reaches their systems, rather than being disapproved product by product after the fact, which is the slower and more frustrating way to find the same errors.
What determines how smooth this is
Mostly your product data. GTINs, brand names and clear categories make for a feed that passes validation quickly, because the platform can match your product against its own catalogue of known items with confidence. Missing them doesn’t stop us building the feed, but it does mean some products go live with warnings rather than full eligibility, which we’ll flag rather than hide.
It’s also worth knowing this is ongoing infrastructure, not a one-time file. Once submitted, the feed needs to keep matching your actual stock, price and availability, which is why we set it to regenerate on a schedule rather than leaving it as a snapshot that quietly goes stale the first time you change a price.
Neither Google nor Meta approves a feed once and leaves it alone afterwards — both re-check products periodically, so data that drifts out of sync with your site can trigger disapprovals weeks after the original setup looked fine.
The two platforms also don’t treat every category the same way. Some product types carry extra required fields — apparel needs size and colour attributes, for instance — and a feed that’s fine for most of your catalogue can still fail validation on a specific category if that’s overlooked.
Product feed generation for Google/Meta
You need a Google or Meta product feed built from your catalogue for the first time. We configure it, validate it against their rules, and confirm it's accepted.
- Full backup taken before we start
- If we can’t fix it, you get your money back
- We never ask for your own password
What we need from you
- Access to Google Merchant Center and/or Meta Commerce Manager
- Confirmation of which platforms you want to feed — Google, Meta, or both
- Whether your products have GTINs, or whether that field should be left out
- Any products that shouldn’t appear in the feed (discontinued, backorder-only)
This or something else?
| Setting up a feed for the first time | This fix covers it |
| A feed exists but was never generated correctly | This fix covers it |
| An existing feed getting disapproved by Google or Meta | Product feed disapproval diagnosis & fix |
| Merchant Center account itself not verified | Google Merchant Center account setup |
| Prices in the feed not matching the site | Structured data vs feed price mismatch |
What we do
- Review your product data against what the feed format actually requires field by field
- Configure the feed to include everything Google and Meta each need, since their requirements don’t fully overlap
- Map categories, GTINs and availability correctly for each product, not just the bestsellers
- Submit the feed and validate it against the platform’s own rules before treating it as live
- Fix anything flagged during validation before it reaches customers as a disapproved listing
- Confirm products appear as expected in Merchant Center or Commerce Manager, not just that the file uploaded
What is included
- A validated feed submitted to the platforms you chose
- Any products with missing required data flagged and listed by name
- Confirmation that products pass the platform’s own validation, not just ours
- The pre-change backup, kept for 30 days
Not included
- Ongoing management of ad campaigns using the feed, which is a marketing service
- Writing product titles or descriptions the feed depends on
- Fixing an existing feed already flagged for disapproval, which needs its own diagnosis
- Merchant Center account verification, if that hasn’t happened yet
Questions about this fix
Do I need GTINs for every product?
Not always, but products without one are often shown with reduced visibility or excluded from certain placements. If you sell branded goods, getting GTINs is usually worth the effort; for handmade or unique items, there's a documented exemption we can apply for instead.
Will this include both Google and Meta, or do I choose?
Your choice. The underlying product data is similar for both, but each platform has its own account, its own validation rules and its own quirks, so we set them up as two connected pieces of work rather than assuming you want both.
How do variations show up in the feed?
Each variation you want purchasable should appear as its own feed entry with its own identifier — this is one of the more common places feeds go wrong, so we check it specifically rather than trusting a default plugin setting.
What if some products fail validation?
You get a list of exactly which and why, generated by the platform itself rather than a guess. Some will need data changes on your end; we tell you which is which.
Does this feed update automatically as my catalogue changes?
Yes, once set up it regenerates on the schedule the plugin or platform supports rather than needing manual resubmission every time you add a product.
Related fixes
If this is the second time this year
A bad update breaking the site is a symptom of updates not being tested first. Care plans run every update on a staging clone before it reaches your live site, which is the actual fix for this happening again.
Your access, your rules
Create a separate admin account for us and delete it when we are done. For anything else, we get in touch and agree a method — never a form field on this site, never by reply to an email.
We back up first, always
Before anything is touched we take a full backup and keep it for 30 days. If a fix goes wrong, we put the site back exactly as it was.
If it is not what you bought
If the problem turns out smaller than what you ordered, we refund the difference. If it is bigger, we stop and send a quote before doing any extra work.
If we cannot fix it
You get back what we received. Diagnosis is on us — you only pay when the problem is actually solved. The payment processor takes its fee before the money reaches us, so we never hold it and it is not ours to return. That is true here as everywhere else.
If it comes back
Reply within seven days of delivery and we put it back on the bench at no cost. The fix is not finished until it holds.
What we are responsible for
If something goes wrong with a fix, our responsibility is limited to what you paid for it. We take a full backup first so mistakes can be undone, and we tell you before doing anything outside what you bought.