A product feed is a structured file (XML, CSV, TSV, or JSON) that lists every product in your catalog with the fields advertising and marketplace platforms need to display them.
Every advertising channel — Google Shopping, Meta Catalog, Amazon, TikTok Shop, eMag, Allegro — needs to know what you sell before it can show your products to shoppers. A product feed is the structured file that delivers that information: one row or record per product, with standardized columns for the price, availability, image, link, and identifiers each channel requires.
Most feeds use one of four formats. XML (specifically Google Merchant Center XML) is the historical default and still dominant for Google Shopping. CSV and TSV are tabular and easier to inspect manually. JSON is increasingly used for API-driven imports. The format matters less than the underlying field coverage: a feed missing required fields will be rejected regardless of format.
A complete feed for most channels includes id, title, description, link, image_link, price, availability, brand, GTIN or MPN, condition, and shipping. Channels with stricter taxonomies (Google, Meta) also expect google_product_category and product_type. Channels with regional rules (eMag, Allegro) add language and country tags. FeedArc generates a validated feed per channel from a single product catalog — you import once, export to every channel with the channel-specific schema applied automatically.
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.
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.
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 product feed — and 31 other feed concerns — automatically. Free to start, no credit card needed.
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