Google Merchant Center Feed Disapproved - Data Quality Good - No Warnings

[SEMCLIX]

I have noticed Google Merchant Center has been making many changes of over the last month. Feeds can now be optimized for certain product attributes. The dilemma currently is that I have a Google Merchant Center Data feed that shows zero warnings and that the data quality is good.  Unfortunately, the entire feed has been disapproved. Across many other websites that I noticed the same issues, I have been able to fix all warnings and the feeds are taken perfectly. This one sites issues are eluding me.

Anybody have any suggestions or experience dealing with this problem?

Possible issues I have looked into but could be affecting feed.

Merchant Center Guidelines have been reviewed multiple, multiple times and here is what I have found.

1. Website has limited duplicate content taken from distributors product listings (I have fought a unending battle with site owner to make all product content original)

2. Refurbished Products Issue: The sites feed has listed all products as "new". I found some of the product content in the site had "refurbished" listed. The guidelines state that products must be listed & marked as refurbished in the feed. To overcome this issue I disabled all refurbished products and resubmitted the feed. This did produce a good approved data feed.

[DaveDawson]

do all the products have the correct google_product_category?

are the products "off the shelf" and as such require a MPN (manufacturers part number)?

can you past the title and the first line of the csv file so I can take a look for you?

[SEMCLIX]

Hello David,

Currently all the products are have been assigned a google product category.

For example, Electronics > Audio > Audio Players & Recorders

The products all have designated unique product identifiers.

For example, Google: [g:brand] & Google: [g:mpn]

When uploading the XML feed to Google Merchant Center, data quality is good and no warnings are recognized. All products within the feed are being disallowed.

I am still wonder if this is a issue with the having refurbished products previously being labeled as "new". All refurbished have been disabled from site so the new feed only contains new products. After making adjustments the feed is basically being denied.

Here is the XML feed URL: http://www.retrohomeaudio.com/gmerchantcenter.en.us.xml

Thanks for Inquiry!

[DaveDawson]

sorry for the delay...  the message to say you had replied was in my junk folder.

Are the MPN's actual Manufacturer Part Numbers?  Or just something you made up?

I'm running a few tests on the feed now.

[DaveDawson]

Ok well if you run the feed through celebird's google base feed checker this is the results.

celebird validation summary id: 5b1fea0285da3d91315be5c08bd3fc6b

Celebird feed check validation defect and warning summary

count defect-message

1 attribute error (shipping) missing required attribute must be set in account

1 attribute error (tax) missing required attribute must be set in account

1 attribute warning: 7 items missing at least two valid brand,mpn,gtin

1 attribute warning (expiration_date) default products 30-days can be used

1 attribute warning undocumented attribute (quantity)

1 description disapproval warning promotional text: !

2 celebird recommendations

2 description disapproval warnings promotional text: buy

5 google_product_category errors missing gtin attribute

5 google_product_category errors missing gtin value

7 mpn possible bad MPN

7 UPI warnings missing at least two valid brand,mpn,gtin

12 description disapproval errors promotional text: caps

63 html violations

85 availability warnings item must be in-transit in 3 business-days.

85 product_type warnings no breadcrumbs in taxonomy

(c)2012 celebird

Celebird feed check validation defect report summary

0 probable file integrity defects in gmerchantcenter.en.us.xml

0 probable file size defects in gmerchantcenter.en.us.xml

0 probable XML formatting defects in gmerchantcenter.en.us.xml

107 probable attribute defects in gmerchantcenter.en.us.xml

0 probable duplicate variant defects in gmerchantcenter.en.us.xml

63 probable html violation defects in gmerchantcenter.en.us.xml

0 probable character-encoding defects in gmerchantcenter.en.us.xml

0 probable character-encoding detailed defects in gmerchantcenter.en.us.xml

Copyright 2011 by Celebird

Before I got these result back I saw that you are using > and & in your google product category.

Try formatting it like this:

Home & Garden > Kitchen & Dining > Kitchen Tools & Utensils

with & replacing & and > replacing >

Also dump your expiration date.  You don't need it.  Google Base just sets it to a month and then you set it to fetch your feed every week/day so it never expires.

[SEMCLIX]

David,

This looks very interesting. I am running a test on the results now and can already see errors in the list above that I also noticed. Thanks for your input and information about the feed checker. This will certainly get me going in the right direction.

Best Regards,

Josh

[DaveDawson]

No problem  Happy to be of assistance.