GMC Error Code Library

GMC requires you to verify and claim ownership of your website before serving ads. Verification proves you own or control the domain; claiming prevents another GMC account from using the same domain. Without both, products can't appear in Shopping results. This error appears when: (1) you've never verified the domain, (2) your verification expired, or (3) another account has claimed the domain and yours can't.

The availability value you submitted in your product feed ('in stock', 'out of stock', 'preorder') does not match what Google's crawler reads from your product landing page. Google cross-checks your feed against your live pages after every crawl cycle, and a persistent mismatch is treated the same as any other misrepresentation: a sign that you're showing shoppers something you can't actually deliver.

Google tests whether shoppers can actually complete a purchase on your store. This goes beyond your product pages loading — Google verifies the full checkout path is functional for all users globally. A checkout that requires account creation, forces country-specific payment methods, crashes on certain payment options, shows errors on the order confirmation page, or demands mandatory marketing opt-in before purchase will fail Google's checkout review. Google's reviewers use test purchases and automated systems to verify this.

Google has determined that your account, or someone associated with it, is intentionally circumventing their system — exploiting loopholes, disguising banned activity, or using technical tricks to avoid detection of policy violations. This is distinct from accidentally violating a policy. Circumventing systems typically involves patterns Google's automated systems detect at scale: multiple accounts owned by the same entity, domain hopping after suspension, cloaking, fake business identities, or creating 'clean' accounts to launder suspended activity.

Google's algorithms have detected patterns in your feed that suggest inaccurate, misleading, or low-quality data. This is a catch-all warning covering many specific issues: pricing that doesn't match market rates (suspected spam), titles with excessive keyword stuffing, descriptions copied across products, attribute values that contradict each other (e.g., color = 'Blue' but image is red), or unrealistic inventory claims. Data quality issues erode shopper trust and Google's trust in your feed.

Your feed contains two or more items that Google identifies as the same product. This happens when the same product is submitted with different IDs, or when it appears in multiple feeds targeting the same country. Google deduplicates to prevent one seller from dominating search results, so only one version actually shows — the others are suppressed. For your account, this wastes feed capacity and creates reporting confusion.

Google couldn't parse your feed file. This is different from individual product errors — the feed file itself has formatting issues that prevent Google from reading any products. Causes include: malformed XML/CSV, incorrect character encoding, truncated file (download interrupted), missing required columns, invalid root element structure, or unescaped special characters breaking the parser.

Google Merchant Center is trying to fetch your product feed from the URL you configured, but the request is failing. This means the server hosting your feed URL is returning an error, the URL has changed, requires authentication, is blocking Googlebot's user agent, or is returning something other than a valid feed file. Unlike a website-unreachable error (which affects your product pages), this error specifically affects the URL where your feed file lives.

Google tried to fetch the image URL you submitted in your product feed and received an error — the image URL returned a 404 (not found), 403 (forbidden), 5xx (server error), or the request timed out. Google cannot display a product listing without a fetchable, verified product image. Unlike 'image too small' (which is a quality issue), an image crawl error means Google literally cannot retrieve the image file at all.

Your product image has promotional text or graphics overlaid on it. Google's policy strictly prohibits: sale banners ('SALE!', '50% OFF', 'NEW'), price overlays ('$19.99', 'Starting at $15'), watermarks (seller URL, logo in corner), brand logos unless they're part of the physical product, shipping/stock overlays ('Free Shipping', 'In Stock'), or any decorative graphics not part of the actual product. Google wants product images to show the product as shoppers would see it in real life, without marketing layers.

The primary image you submitted for this product is below Google's minimum pixel dimensions. Google Shopping is a visual channel — undersized images look blurry or pixelated at Shopping ad sizes, creating a poor user experience. Google enforces minimums to maintain ad quality. Meeting the technical minimum is not enough to compete; most high-performing Shopping listings use images of 800×800px or larger.

Your product image URL points to a file in an unsupported format. Google accepts: JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg), PNG (.png), GIF (.gif, non-animated), BMP (.bmp), TIFF (.tif, .tiff), and WebP (.webp). Unsupported formats include: SVG, HEIC/HEIF (iPhone default), AVIF (recent support), PDF, animated GIF, and RAW formats. Even correctly-formatted files with wrong extensions cause issues.

Your product is missing enough identifiers for Google to uniquely identify it within Google's product knowledge graph. Google requires a specific combination: ideally GTIN + brand, or MPN + brand for products without GTIN, or brand alone with identifier_exists = 'no' for truly unique items. Products with insufficient identifiers can still appear in Shopping but can't participate in comparison shopping (the 'see prices from X sellers' feature) — a major source of qualified traffic.

Your feed includes a value for the condition attribute, but it doesn't match one of Google's three accepted values. Google treats condition as a controlled vocabulary — there are exactly three valid values ('new', 'used', 'refurbished') and anything else is invalid. The error often occurs when merchants use more descriptive terms ('like new', 'excellent', 'grade A', 'brand new', 'open box') that make sense to shoppers but aren't recognized by Google's schema.

Your google_product_category attribute has a value that doesn't match Google's official product taxonomy. Google accepts either the full category path ('Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Shirts & Tops') or the numeric category ID ('212'). Values that don't match the exact taxonomy — misspelled paths, custom categories, old/deprecated categories — are rejected. Even small spelling differences ('T-Shirts' vs 'T Shirts') can cause invalidation.

You've submitted a GTIN (Global Trade Item Number — which includes UPCs, EANs, ISBNs, and ITF-14s) but the value fails Google's validation. GTINs have a mathematically verifiable check digit as the last digit. If your GTIN fails the check-digit algorithm, Google won't accept it. Google also rejects GTINs that are all zeros, repeating digits, test sequences, or GTINs that don't exist in the GS1 registry.

The price value in your product feed is formatted incorrectly, missing the currency, is zero, is negative, or exceeds Google's accepted price range. Unlike a price mismatch (where the price is real but inconsistent), an invalid price means Google cannot parse the value at all — so the product is disappeared from all surfaces until it's fixed.

Your feed has a sale_price attribute but Google has determined the value is invalid. Common reasons: sale_price is higher than or equal to the regular price (not actually a discount), the discount is too small to be meaningful (under 1%), sale_price is below zero, formatting issues (missing currency, wrong decimal separator), or the sale_price doesn't match the sale price shown on your landing page.

shipping_label is a custom identifier you use to group products for shipping rate purposes. It lets you assign different shipping rules to different product categories: 'oversized', 'fragile', 'hazardous', 'perishable', 'free-shipping-eligible'. The label itself can be any string up to 100 characters, but it must match a label configured in your GMC shipping settings. An invalid label means the value doesn't match any configured shipping rule — causing the product to fall back to default shipping or fail shipping calculation.

Your product has a shipping_weight attribute but its value or format is invalid. Google requires a numeric weight followed by a unit separated by a space: '2.5 kg', '1.2 lb', '500 g', '16 oz'. Common failures: missing units, wrong unit abbreviations ('kgs' instead of 'kg'), negative values, zero values, values that are too large to be a real product, or mixing different unit systems in the same feed.

Your product URL (the 'link' attribute) doesn't meet Google's URL formatting standards. Valid URLs must start with http:// or https://, use only valid URL characters (properly percent-encoded for special characters), and resolve to a real hostname. Common failures: URLs missing the protocol prefix, URLs with unencoded spaces or special characters, relative URLs that lack a domain, or URLs pointing to invalid hosts.

The product URL you submitted in your feed (the 'link' attribute) is returning an error when Google's crawler tries to visit it. This means Google can't verify your product details, confirm the price matches your feed, or check that the product is actually available. The product's landing page URL is returning a 4xx (not found, forbidden), 5xx (server error), or causing a redirect loop that Google can't resolve.

Your product image doesn't meet Google's quality standards. Google's algorithms analyze images for sharpness, subject clarity, promotional overlays, watermarks, lifestyle vs product focus, and resolution. A low-quality image flag means the image is blurry, the product isn't the clear focus, there's heavy text overlay or watermarking, or the resolution is too low for Shopping's display dimensions. Even when images technically meet size minimums, they can fail quality review if they look unprofessional or unclear.

Google cannot confidently verify that your business is who it claims to be, or that your product information accurately represents what you're selling. Misrepresentation is an umbrella term covering 7 distinct sub-categories — your suspension email won't tell you which one triggered it.

ads_labels and ads_grouping are free-form tags for organizing products in Google Ads campaigns. Similar to custom_label but used for different purposes: ads_labels typically groups products by campaign tier, promotional status, or inventory level for ad-specific targeting. ads_grouping is used for product grouping in AdWords/Google Ads UI. Without these, your product groups are less organized, and you miss segmentation opportunities for bid optimization.

For any product in Google's Apparel & Accessories category, you must specify who the product is designed for: a newborn, an infant, a toddler, a child, or an adult. Google uses age_group to display the right sizing options, filter your product from children's clothing searches when it's adult apparel (and vice versa), and show products in age-appropriate Shopping surfaces. Without it, your apparel product can't compete in filtered searches — which are a majority of apparel purchase intent queries.

Your product feed is missing the brand attribute. Google uses brand — combined with GTIN and MPN — to match your product to its global product catalog. Without a brand value, Google can't confidently link your listing to the right product knowledge graph node, which limits how often and where your ads appear. For many competitive categories, brand is effectively required to compete.

A canonical link (<link rel='canonical'>) tells search engines and Google Shopping which URL is the primary version of a product page when multiple URLs serve the same content. Common duplicate URL scenarios: tracking parameters (?utm_source=ads), filter parameters (?color=blue&size=m), session IDs, http vs https, www vs non-www. Without a canonical, Google may not know which URL to treat as authoritative — leading to duplicate product flags and split ranking signals.

Your apparel product doesn't have a color attribute in the feed. Color isn't cosmetic metadata — it's how Google surfaces your specific product variant for color-filtered searches (e.g., 'blue running shoes women's'). Without it, your ad can't appear when a shopper filters by color on Google Shopping, which is the majority of apparel search behavior. Every distinct color variant must also have a unique entry in the feed.

Your product feed doesn't include the 'condition' attribute, which tells Google whether the product is new, used, or refurbished. Google requires this because it affects how the product is displayed, which searches it appears in, and whether it qualifies for comparison shopping against other listings of the same product. A product without condition can't be placed in Google's product catalog.

Google's Shopping policies require that every merchant have at least one publicly accessible method for customers to contact them. This is part of Google's 'transparent business identity' requirement — buyers need a way to reach you for order issues, returns, and general questions. A contact page, email address, or phone number must be visible and reachable on your website without the user having to log in or request it.

Google offers five custom label slots (custom_label_0 through custom_label_4) — free-form string fields you can use to tag products with any internal classification. Smart merchants use these for: season ('Winter', 'Spring'), margin tier ('High Margin', 'Low Margin'), product lifecycle ('New', 'Bestseller', 'Clearance'), price tier ('Premium', 'Mid', 'Budget'), or any custom dimension. Google Ads lets you split product groups by custom_label values, enabling granular bid strategies — impossible without labels.

Your product feed has no description for this product, or the description is identical to the title. Google uses the description to understand what your product is, surface it for relevant long-tail queries, and populate the product listing in free listings and dynamic remarketing. A missing description doesn't just hurt compliance — it cuts you out of a large portion of relevant searches that go beyond your exact product name.

Your apparel product is missing the gender attribute. Gender tells Google whether the product is designed for men, women, or is unisex — and it's one of the first filters shoppers apply when browsing apparel on Google Shopping. Missing gender means your products are excluded from the filtered search results that drive most apparel conversion. The gender attribute also informs fit recommendations and prevents women's products from showing to men's searches.

Your product is marked as a unique product (identifier_exists is true or unset) but no GTIN has been supplied. Google requires a GTIN for virtually all manufactured products to map them to its product catalog. Without it, Google cannot confidently show the right listing for the right user query.

identifier_exists is an optional attribute that tells Google 'this product doesn't have standard identifiers' when you legitimately can't provide GTIN or MPN. Some products — handmade goods, custom-made items, antiques, vintage items, store-exclusive items — don't have universal product codes. Setting identifier_exists = 'no' exempts these products from Google's identifier requirements. Without this attribute, Google treats every product as needing a GTIN and flags identifier-less products as non-compliant.

installment is a structured attribute that describes available installment payment plans for your product. It includes the number of installments and the price per installment. Google displays this information in Shopping results as 'or 4 x $12.50' below the full price, signaling to shoppers that financing is available. For products above certain price thresholds (typically $50+), installment display can increase CTR by 15–30% because it reduces perceived cost barrier.

is_bundle is a boolean attribute indicating whether a product is a bundle — multiple different items sold as a single unit. This could be a gift set (candle + lotion + soap), a kit (camera + lens + bag), a variety pack (different flavors in one package), or a themed collection (skincare routine). Setting is_bundle = 'true' tells Google your product is a curated collection, not a single item, so Google can match it appropriately in search results.

item_group_id links variant products together — all sizes and colors of the same base product should share the same item_group_id. When Google sees multiple products with the same item_group_id, it groups them into a single Shopping listing with color/size swatches that shoppers can filter without leaving the search results. Without item_group_id, your 5 color × 6 size = 30 variants appear as 30 separate unrelated products, each competing with each other and confusing shoppers.

Your apparel product doesn't specify a material. Material is a filterable attribute shoppers use to narrow down product choices — 'wool sweater', '100% cotton t-shirt', 'leather jacket'. Missing material means your product won't appear when shoppers filter by specific materials. Google also uses material to classify product quality signals (wool/leather typically cue premium positioning) and to prevent misleading categorization (e.g., submitting a faux leather jacket without clarifying).

MPN (Manufacturer Part Number) is a unique identifier assigned by the manufacturer to distinguish their specific product model. Unlike a GTIN (which is globally standardized via GS1), MPNs are assigned by each manufacturer independently. Google uses MPN — especially when paired with brand — as an alternative product matching signal when no GTIN is available. For products where GTINs don't exist (custom parts, industrial components, accessories without barcodes), MPN + brand is the required identifier pair.

The multipack attribute tells Google how many identical items are in a single product listing when you sell multi-packs. For example, if you sell a '6-pack of black socks' as a single product, multipack = 6. Google uses this to calculate the per-unit price and compare your listing fairly against single-item competitors. Without multipack, Google may display your 6-pack's total price next to a single-item competitor's price — making yours look 6x more expensive and hurting CTR.

Your apparel or textile product doesn't specify its pattern. Pattern describes the visual design of the fabric — solid, striped, plaid, floral, polka dot, geometric, camo, etc. Shoppers filter by pattern when shopping for specific looks ('floral dress', 'plaid shirt', 'camo pants'), and products without pattern values are excluded from those filtered results. Pattern is also used by Google's ML models to better match your product to shopper intent and avoid displaying a polka-dot dress to someone searching 'plain black dress'.

pickup_method is a Local Inventory Ads attribute that tells Google how shoppers can pick up your product locally. Valid values: 'buy' (buy online, pick up at store), 'reserve' (reserve online, pay in store), 'ship to store' (ship to local store for pickup), 'not supported' (no pickup available). Without this attribute, your products can't appear in Google's pickup-focused search results, a growing segment of local shopping traffic.

The google_product_category attribute assigns your product to Google's official product taxonomy — a hierarchical classification system of over 6,000 categories. Without it, Google must guess your product's category from your title and description. When it guesses wrong, your product is shown for irrelevant queries and excluded from category-specific placements (comparison shopping, category pages, filter facets). For many ad types, Google requires specific attributes per category — you can't submit age_group without being in an Apparel category.

product_type is your internal taxonomy for the product — different from google_product_category (Google's taxonomy). It tells Google how you categorize the product within your own store hierarchy, typically using a multi-level path like 'Apparel > Women > Dresses > Cocktail Dresses'. Google uses this for targeted ad grouping, bid management in Smart Shopping, and matching shopper intent. Without it, your products compete in a flat pool and your Google Ads campaigns lose the ability to segment and optimize by category.

Google requires every merchant running Shopping ads to have a publicly accessible return policy page that Google's crawler can read. This isn't optional — it's a core part of Google's buyer protection framework. Your return policy page must be reachable from your website (not just buried in a footer), must describe your return window and conditions, and must match the return_policy_label attribute in your feed if you submit one. Google's crawler actively verifies this page exists and is readable.

You submitted a sale_price in your feed but didn't specify when the sale starts and ends. Google needs this date range to know when to apply the discounted price in Shopping results and when to revert to the regular price. Without it, Google applies the sale_price indefinitely, which can cause issues when your actual landing page reverts to the regular price. The sale_price_effective_date attribute uses ISO 8601 format: '2026-04-20T00:00-0500/2026-04-27T23:59-0500'.

Your product has no shipping rules configured in Google Merchant Center for the countries you're targeting. Google requires that every product shows a delivery cost and estimated delivery window to shoppers before they click — it's part of the shopping experience guarantee. Missing shipping information means the product can't show in ads because Google doesn't know what to display in the 'Free shipping' or 'Arrives by [date]' line under your ad.

Google requires that every merchant have a publicly accessible shipping policy page that explains delivery costs, shipping methods, and estimated delivery times. This is separate from the shipping attributes in your product feed — the shipping policy is a human-readable page on your website. Google's crawler verifies it exists and can read the content. The policy page demonstrates to shoppers (and to Google) that your store is transparent about fulfillment commitments.

size_system tells Google which sizing convention your size values use — US, UK, EU, IT, FR, DE, JP, CN, AU, BR, or MEX. A 'size 38' means different things depending on the system: US shoe size 38 is about a women's 7.5, EU size 38 is a men's 5.5 in shoes and a women's small in clothing. Without size_system, Google applies the target country's default interpretation, which may not match your actual sizes — especially for international feeds or sellers using non-local sizing.

Your apparel product doesn't have a size attribute in the feed. Size is the most critical filter dimension in apparel shopping — a shopper searching for 'women's blazer size 8' or 'men's running shoes size 12' uses size as their primary filter. Without it, your product can't appear in size-filtered results, which represent the majority of high-intent apparel purchase searches.

subscription_cost is a structured attribute for products sold on a subscription basis. It tells Google the billing period (month, year, week) and the recurring cost. Without it, shoppers see only the first payment amount and may be surprised by recurring charges — a trust-breaking experience. Google uses subscription_cost to properly display 'Starting at $X/month' or 'From $X/year' in Shopping results, setting correct expectations before shoppers click.

tax_category is a US-specific attribute that tells Google how to apply tax to your product. It's primarily used in conjunction with tax nexus settings in GMC to calculate accurate total cost in Shopping results. Common values relate to product categories that have different tax treatment: 'Clothing' (tax-exempt in some states), 'Food' (reduced rate), 'Digital Goods' (varies by state). Missing tax_category means Google uses your account-level default, which may misrepresent actual tax on specific products.

Google's mobile crawler (Googlebot Smartphone) encountered an error accessing your product's mobile landing page. This could be a separate mobile URL (mobile_link attribute) returning an error, a mobile redirect loop, an unresponsive mobile version of the desktop URL, or a page that renders but is unusable on mobile (broken layout, inaccessible CTAs, content cut off). Google requires mobile pages to meet the same availability standards as desktop.

The price Google fetched from your product page does not match the price you submitted in your feed. Google cross-checks this on every crawl, and even a $0.01 discrepancy for more than a few hours will flag the product.

Google has identified one or more products in your feed that fall under its prohibited content policies. Google maintains a strict list of items that cannot be advertised on Shopping, including: dangerous products (weapons, certain explosives, tobacco, most drugs), counterfeit goods, animals (live or recently deceased), sexually explicit content, adult gambling, and products that enable dishonest behavior. Prohibited product listings don't just get disapproved — they put your entire merchant account at risk of suspension.

Your robots.txt file is preventing Google's crawler from accessing one or more of your product pages or the resources those pages depend on (images, stylesheets, JavaScript). Google needs to successfully crawl and render your landing pages to verify product details, check availability, and confirm prices. If robots.txt blocks Google's crawler bot (Googlebot) from the product URL or its critical resources, products are disapproved.

Google's crawler tried to access your product landing page or checkout page via HTTPS and encountered an SSL/TLS error. This could be: an expired certificate, a certificate that doesn't match the domain, a self-signed certificate not trusted by browsers, TLS version mismatch (outdated TLS 1.0/1.1), or mixed content (HTTPS page loading HTTP resources). Shoppers' browsers will show warning screens or block access entirely — Google doesn't serve products pointing to insecure sites.

Your product title exceeds 150 characters — Google's hard limit. Anything beyond 150 characters is stripped entirely, which means key product attributes (size, color, variant, brand) at the end of a long title will vanish from your listing. Even within the limit, Google only shows the first 70 characters in most ad placements, so the structure of your title matters as much as the length.

Your product title is too brief to provide enough information for Google's matching algorithm and for shoppers scanning search results. Google recommends at least 70 characters to include brand, product type, key features, size, color, and other relevant attributes. Titles like 'Blue Shirt', 'Dress', 'Book' lack specificity and fail to match shopper intent. The title is the single most important attribute for Shopping ad performance — short titles cap your potential traffic.

Google has determined that your store uses deceptive, manipulative, or misleading business practices that harm or deceive shoppers. This is broader than misrepresentation (which is about specific product claims). Unacceptable business practices covers your entire shopping experience: how you present urgency, scarcity, reviews, pricing, celebrity/brand affiliations, checkout flows, and post-purchase communications. Google's quality reviewers evaluate the full store experience, not individual products.

Google's crawler cannot access your website. This could mean your entire domain returns a server error (5xx), your website is offline, your CDN or hosting is down, or — most commonly — your firewall or bot protection is blocking Googlebot's IP addresses. Unlike other feed errors that affect individual products, a website-unreachable error affects your entire store and blocks all Shopping ad serving.