product data specification
Also called: product feed specification, feed spec, Merchant Center product data spec
The product data specification is Google's official set of attributes and formatting rules a product feed must follow (id, title, description, link, image_link, price, availability, and more) so items qualify for Google Shopping ads and free product listings in Merchant Center.
Google groups the specification’s attributes by how strictly they are required. Seven are always mandatory: id, title, description, link, image_link, price, and availability. The spec also fixes the format of each value, so title caps at 150 characters, description at 5,000, and price must use ISO 4217 currency format.
Required vs. conditionally required attributes
A second tier is conditionally required based on category and target country. brand is required for most new products (books, movies, and recordings excepted). gtin is required when the manufacturer assigned one; mpn fills in when no GTIN exists. Apparel adds color, size, gender, age_group, and item_group_id for variants in markets like the US, UK, Germany, France, Brazil, and Japan.
A minimal row looks like:
id: SKU-4471
title: Merino Wool Crew Sweater, Charcoal, M
price: 89.00 USD
availability: in_stock
gtin: 0885909950...Missing, inaccurate, or malformed attributes cause disapprovals, limited eligibility, or wrong displays in Merchant Center. Google keeps extending the spec: in 2024 it added structured_title and structured_description for AI-generated content, plus a loyalty_program attribute for member pricing in the US and Japan.
How it affects your traffic
For an ecommerce store the feed is a second front door: a clean, spec-compliant feed is what qualifies products for free listings in the Shopping tab and the product grids Google folds into regular results, traffic you do not pay for. The same attributes (GTIN, brand, structured title) should mirror the Product schema on your product pages, so feed discipline and on-page structured data reinforce each other. Sloppy or missing attributes get products disapproved and quietly drop them out of those surfaces. Our E-commerce SEO work audits feed and on-page product data together so your catalog stays eligible across both.
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