Feed validation is the process of checking a product feed against a channel's schema and rules — required fields, data types, value formats, and business logic — before upload, so errors are caught locally rather than after disapproval.
Every channel publishes a feed specification: which fields are required, which are optional, what values they accept, and what format they expect. Google Merchant Center alone has more than 50 distinct attributes and at least 30 documented error codes. Manually reviewing 5,000 products against this schema is impractical — validation has to be automated.
A validator runs every row of the feed through three layers of checks. The first is structural: are the required fields present, are the data types correct (numeric price, ISO-format date), and is the file itself well-formed XML or CSV. The second is value-level: is the GTIN check-digit valid, is the image URL reachable over HTTPS, is the price greater than zero. The third is business-rule: does the price in the feed match the landing page, is the availability status consistent with stock levels, does the product belong to the declared google_product_category.
FeedArc validates every export against the destination channel before generating the file. Errors are grouped by type (missing GTIN, invalid image, price mismatch) and presented with the specific fix per product. This pre-flight validation is the difference between a 95% approval rate and a 99.5% approval rate — the latter unlocks Performance Max scale.
Google Merchant Center (GMC) is the Google platform where you upload, validate, and manage product feeds that power Google Shopping ads, free listings, Performance Max, and Demand Gen campaigns.
A Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is the international barcode identifier — UPC, EAN, JAN, or ISBN — that uniquely identifies a manufactured product worldwide, issued by GS1.
Feed rules are transformations applied to a product catalog before export — mapping internal field names to channel-specific schemas, filtering out ineligible products, enriching data, or applying conditional logic per channel.
FeedArc handles feed validation — and 31 other feed concerns — automatically. Free to start, no credit card needed.
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