Shopify Product Feed for Google Merchant Center & YouTube

DataEase can generate a product feed for Google Merchant Center. Google Shopping ads, free listings, and YouTube Shopping all read the same Merchant Center feed, so one feed covers them all.

Each feed gets its own permanent URL. DataEase rebuilds the file on a schedule you choose, and Google fetches it from that URL.

Note

Product feeds are available on paid plans. See Understanding plans. You can create up to 5 feeds per store. A feed includes at most as many products as your plan allows.

What shipped: product feeds release notes.

Create a feed

1. Open Product feeds in the app menu and click Create feed.
2. Enter a feed name, choose the file format (XML or tab-separated text), and pick a refresh interval (from every hour to every 24 hours, or manual only).
3. Optionally add an additional product filter in Shopify search syntax, for example vendor:Acme. Only active products are ever included.
4. Set the title and description sources, then add attribute mappings and rules if you need them (see below).
5. Click Preview first products to check the result, then Save and generate.

The feed appears in the list with its URL. The first file is ready after a short time; large catalogs take longer.

Add the feed to Google Merchant Center

1. Click Copy URL on your feed.
2. In Google Merchant Center, add a new product source that uses a scheduled fetch from a URL and paste the copied URL.
3. Set Google’s fetch frequency to match your refresh interval.

If you use YouTube Shopping, link the same Merchant Center account to your channel. No separate feed is needed.

Titles and descriptions

You decide where the title and description come from:

Setting	Result
Product title and variant options	The product title, followed by the variant name, for example T-Shirt - Red / M (default).
Product title only	Exactly the product title.
SEO title	The SEO title from the Shopify page settings. If it is empty, the product title is used.
Custom template	Your own text with tokens such as {{product.title}}, {{product.vendor}}, {{option.Color}}, or {{metafield.namespace.key}}.

For descriptions you can use the product description (default), the SEO description (falling back to the product description), or a template. Descriptions are sent as plain text without HTML.

Tip

DataEase never uses the SEO title or description unless you choose it. What you select here is exactly what Google receives.

Attribute mapping

Most attributes are filled automatically:

• id from the variant, link from the online store, image_link and up to 10 additional_image_link from the product images.
• price and sale_price (when a compare-at price is higher), availability, brand (the vendor), gtin (the barcode, validated), condition (new), item_group_id, color and size (from variant options named Color or Size), and shipping_weight.
• Values in metafields of the ssp-google-shopping namespace (the same ones the older Google Shopping export used) are honored automatically.

In Attribute mapping you can choose a different source for brand, gtin, mpn, gender, age_group, google_product_category, custom_label_0 to custom_label_4, and more. A source can be a Shopify field, a metafield (namespace.key), a fixed value, or a template.

Rules

Rules apply to individual variants, in the order you list them. Each rule has conditions combined with All (and) or Any (or):

• Exclude from feed: matching variants are left out.
• Set attribute: matching variants get a value, for example custom_label_0 = cheap for every variant priced below 20, or gender = female for products tagged women.

Conditions can check price, compare-at price, vendor, product type, tag, inventory, product or variant title, SKU, collection handle, or a metafield.

What is checked

Before a variant is written to the file, DataEase checks that it has the attributes Google requires: id, title, description, link, image_link, price (above zero), and availability. Variants that fail are skipped, and duplicate IDs are dropped. Overly long titles (150 characters) and descriptions (5000 characters) are shortened, and invalid GTINs are removed.

Open a feed and scroll to Latest generation report to see how many variants had each problem, with example IDs.

Manage feeds

• Refresh now rebuilds the file immediately. Google keeps receiving the previous file until the new one is ready. If a run fails, the previous file stays online and the error is shown on the feed.
• Pause stops refreshes and takes the URL offline. Resume restores it.
• New URL generates a new secret URL. The old URL stops working right away, so update Merchant Center afterwards.
• Delete removes the feed and its files. The URL stops working immediately.

Troubleshooting

• The feed has 0 items. Check that products are active and published to the Online Store, and that your additional filter is not too narrow. Products without a public online store URL are skipped.
• Google reports missing GTIN or brand. Add barcodes and vendors in Shopify, or map gtin, mpn, and brand to other fields.
• Only part of the catalog is included. Your plan limits the number of products in a feed. See the message on the feed and Understanding plans.