An item-level issue is a problem that Google Merchant Center finds with one specific product in your feed, rather than with your whole account. Depending on how serious it is, the product may be disapproved and stop appearing in Shopping ads and free listings, or it may stay live with limited visibility until you fix it.
How item-level issues work
Each time Google processes your feed and crawls your product pages, it checks every product against its data requirements and policies. Anything that fails is listed against that product, with the attribute concerned, the affected destinations (ads, free listings, specific countries) and a severity. In the current Merchant Center interface, these products sit under a “needs attention” view, and you can download the full list.
Issues fall into a few broad groups:
- Data quality A missing or invalid GTIN, a title that is too long, a missing brand, an incorrect product category.
- Mismatches The price or availability in the feed does not match what Google sees on the landing page.
- Images Too small, a placeholder, or carrying promotional text or watermarks.
- Policy The product, or how it is described, breaks one of Google’s Shopping policies.
- Shipping and tax Delivery costs are missing or do not match the site.
They differ from an account-level issue, such as a misrepresentation suspension, which affects every product at once and needs a different kind of response.
Why it matters
A disapproved product earns nothing, however good your campaign is. On a shop with thousands of lines, a single feed fault can disapprove hundreds of products overnight, and unless someone checks diagnostics regularly it can go unnoticed for weeks.
Some causes are specific to selling in the UK. Prices must include VAT for UK shoppers, so a feed exported with ex-VAT trade prices will trigger price mismatches across the catalogue. Delivery charges should be set in pounds sterling and match what the checkout actually charges, and a sale price on the website that has not reached the feed yet will cause a mismatch until it does.
Common mistakes
- Fixing issues one product at a time in Merchant Center when the cause is a rule in the feed source.
- Ignoring warnings because the product is still approved; warnings often limit visibility.
- Making up GTINs, or entering one manufacturer’s barcode on a different product, to clear an error.
- Updating prices on the website on a different schedule from the feed, creating regular mismatches.
- Appealing a policy disapproval without first changing the product or page.
How to act on it
Download the list of affected products and sort it by issue rather than by product. Most shops find that two or three causes account for the bulk of the problems. Fix those at the source: in the ecommerce platform, the feed app, or with feed rules and a supplemental feed where the platform cannot export the right value.
For mismatches, make sure the feed updates at least as often as prices change, and check that structured data on product pages shows the same price and stock status. For policy issues, read the specific policy, change the product page or listing, then request a review. Clearing the feed is the first step in my Performance Max management work for online shops, because a campaign cannot sell products Google will not show.