Google Merchant Centre - Data Feed Failed

[Mantra]

SD v18.2.2 April 2023
Checked my Google Merchant Overview this week and found that active products had plunged from 3478 to 1 between dates 21-25 May 2023.

The feed fails on re-processing with the message below:
The product data you submitted in your feed does not meet the product data specification, so your products were not approved.

The feed has been working fine since upgrading SD vI8.2.0 June 2022 so I checked the Google Universal Product Feed Layout and no changes appear to have been made since and the feed can be opened and viewed as a table in Excel with all column data showing correctly as required.

Not able to check what the problem is in Google diagnostics and trying to get it resolved with Google Support as I need to know which part of the product data specification is causing the problem..

Have any other users experienced a similar problem recently?

[Mantra]

SD v18.2.2 April 2023
Checked my Google Merchant Overview this week and found that active products had plunged from 3478 to 1 between dates 21-25 May 2023.

The feed fails on re-processing with the message below:
The product data you submitted in your feed does not meet the product data specification, so your products were not approved.

I managed to get this resolved - thank you to Gary, Sellerdeck Support and Google Merchant Support.

The cause of the problem was that the 'google-products.xml' data feed had reverted back to the 'XML Feeds | Google Product Layout' and this does not meet all requirements of Google's current product data specification.

The correct feed layout is 'XML Feeds | Google Universal Product Feed Layout'

The settings can be checked by opening the respective design layouts bottom left of screen 'Edit Layout Details | Online File Page Process Type' which should be set to 'None' for the 'XML Feeds | Google Product Layout' and 'Upload' for the 'XML Feeds | Google Universal Product Feed Layout'

Also for 'XML Feeds | Google Universal Product Feed Layout' to be activated Sellerdeck 'Marketing | Google Product Search Data Feed Configuration | Enable Advanced Options' needs to be ticked.

The changes did not take effect straight away after Re-processing the Feed on Google Merchant with the same failure message appearing on completion, however, Google Support informed me that any edit to a product attribute for example 'description' or other will cause the system to initiate a recrawl and you should allow 12 to 24 hours for the change to take effect and I assume this covers the 'google-products.xml' data file.

I was pleased to see that the data feed has cleared with no warnings and the active products count is ramping back again on Google Merchant - Overview.

[stevewhyte]

Amazing thanks Martin, Gary and Google!

[stevewhyte]

Hi again,

Contrary to what I thought, and having applied all of the fixes above, my products are still being rejected by Google and the XML file that is being generated and uploaded still looks like the old feed to me. I have triple checked that I have the correct file tagged for upload and that I have ticked advanced options. Any other suggestions anyone.......please......pretty please?

[Mantra]

Hi Steve,

Sorry to learn you are still having a problem with Google rejecting your product data feed.

I have attached screenshots of the settings I have for information.

The Google Universal Feed Layout should be set to "Upload" with Google Product Feed Layout set to "None" not to upload.

If you have uploaded / refreshed your website with these settings, I suggest you just check that the "google-products.xml" listed in your >Program Data>Sellerdeck>Sellerdeckv18>Site1>SiteHTML folder has been updated and re-process this feed in Google Merchant.

If this continues to be rejected then check in Google Merchant Diagnostics to see if there are any clues as to why this happening.

If you are still having a problem then you may need to contact Google Support online.

Regards

[stevewhyte]

Thanks again Martin,

I checked all of the settings and they all look good. The XML file on the web server has the correct date (Saturday being the latest) and matches the local one on my PC. The file does include a brand and a mpn column, but it doesn't seem to include a lot of the information in the layout for the file and Google isn't having it for some reason. I've opened a ticket with Sellerdeck to see if they can shed any light on it and I'll report back. I suspect I may have to get Google involved, a prospect that makes me shudder!