Product feeds drive visibility in Google Shopping and other channels. Missing identifiers, weak titles and stale data can hold stores back.
For many online stores, the automatically generated ‘product feed’ is usually left to its own devices. The database has the products; the feed pulls from the database; Google and shopping platforms receive the feed. Job done.
But this is not enough. An automatic feed can be automatically wrong. It can contain old titles, missing attributes, weak descriptions and identifiers that nobody has checked since the product was first added.
This is especially important in Google Merchant Centre. Google’s documentation is clear that accurate product identifiers matter. If a product has a GTIN, ensuring it’s correct will help Google understand the product and make the listing easier for customers to find. Products with missing or incorrect GTINs may have limited visibility.
A product feed is not just a way of transferring information – it is a way of describing the store to advertising systems. A human may understand that “large blue widget” is the same product as the manufacturer’s official model, but Google may not. A customer may forgive a slightly vague product title if the image is clear, but shopping platform may not. Feed maintenance is as much a marketing issue as a technical one.
So we should regularly review the attributes that platforms care about: titles, product types, categories, GTINs, brand, MPNs, images, availability, price, variants and condition. This is not glamorous work, but it can be one of the most practical ways to improve e-commerce visibility.