Says need GTIN but have entered GTIN

Stuartmb64
Visitor
2 0 1

Hi

I've entered Barcodes for almost all my products on Shopfiy product page but on a large number of them they still say GTIN is required for this product even though I've entered the barcode. This means it doesn't show on Google. How do I fix this?

Replies 16 (16)

Dirk
Shopify Staff
2209 247 502

Hey, @Stuartmb64 

Happy to help today. There are a few scenarios where that message can crop up, I'll go over them so that you can isolate the cause on your end.

 

If your products do not have a GTIN, you will want to set the "identifier_exists field" to false. That will skip the GTIN requirement by Google. When your products do have a GTIN, you will enter that in the 'barcode' field.

 

Additionally, If the manufacturer has not assigned a barcode to the product, then you do not want to submit a value in GTIN, MPN and Brand fields. Instead, tick the box and select 'this is a custom product'. 

 

Let me know if this helps!vIf there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

Dirk | Social Care @ Shopify 
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Stuartmb64
Visitor
2 0 1

Hi Dirk

Thanks for the response. My problem is there is a manufacturer's bar code. I actually take them from the actual product packaging. I enter it in the barcode box on the product page but the google channel says GTIN required. The odd thing is the barcode I enter works for some products for the same supplier and not others. Just wonder if anyone has seen this before and how to fix

Dirk
Shopify Staff
2209 247 502

I see, that does sound strange. I did find a handy resource from Google here that outlines the various unique product identifiers and how to submit your products. 

 

Lastly, these are the common causes and solutions to the GTIN is required message:

- All products with barcodes need to be marked as false under custom products.

Alternatively, you could try a third-party Google Shopping feed app such as this one here by Simprosys InfoMedia. If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

 

 

Dirk | Social Care @ Shopify 
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 - Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
 - To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

donnamac
Trailblazer
243 5 194

Dirk,

 

Has something changed with the 'custom' checkbox being the default now when adding new products?

 

This is very easily overlooked when we are copying products that we know the basics are 'correct' to begin with but then get marked custome.  It does not get 'active' in Google, but does NOT show up as an error in Shopify.  

 

We also have many products that ARE custom, the checkbox is checked, but they still get flagged by Google as missing gtins.  It seems we have to enter an MPN for them?  

 

These little nuances are creating much time in determining.  How does a shop owner know when small changes like this are made?  We spend SO much time on fine tuning these products so we can advertise them that it takes significant time away from making sales.

 

Any insight is appreciated.

 

simply_nutri
Visitor
1 0 1

We are also having the same exact problem here. All of our products contain UPC's and when they are individually searched on Google, they appear with the product. However, Google keeps kicking them back in the feeds with the reason being that they are missing a GTIN. This is insanity and we really need some help on this. We have over 1000 SKUs that are not pushing for this reason. PLEASE HELP!!!

LoraineIreland
Excursionist
22 0 35

Exactly the same issues here with a lot of my products - seeing the "GTIN missing" message when the GTINs have been completed & are correct, and also "GTIN required" when I have ticked the Custom Product box which should indicate that there IS no GTIN.  This is a complete headwreck and surely something Shopify & Google should be sorting between them?   And (final question), does anything actually happen with these questions sent to Shopify by individual users?

marleyandmoose
Tourist
8 0 2

We also have the exact same issue.  There has to be an issue with the integration between Shopify and Google.  We verified the product bar codes are correct by searching them on Google. Has anyone found a solution to this?

donnamac
Trailblazer
243 5 194
I am in the process of 'talking' with a Shopify support person via email.
It started with chat...and now I'm talking via email with someone else.
This is typical....now I am going through the same things I did on chat (an
hours worth) with someone else.

I have no confidence that all the time I will spend with screenshots, and
trying to explain something via the written word is going to do any good.

Phone support is the only way to discuss issues like this because it is too
difficult to do via chat/email. Once they stopped that...they stopped
customer service.

I will go through the pain of explaining to someone else...and it will
probably take me to yet another person that I have to start all over
again.

I believe there are 'bugs' in the Shopify side that feeds Google. I wish
it was on the Google side...because they actually have customer service.

I'll try to keep you updated
donnamac
Trailblazer
243 5 194

I went back and forth with 'chat support' for about 3 days and this is what transpired.

This is an UPDATE to my post for 10/4/22.  I have spent days looking into things and then another 2 days going back and forth with 'support'.

 

However...they did tell me how to look at the Google data from the SHOPIFY side a little differently.

Maybe this will help some of you.  Sorry it is so long.  I can't help it... : )

 

If you do not have many products, then this might be worth a try. 

1.  Go into your Google App (we get a block saying we have missing product data) 

 

                donnamac_1-1665105445363.png

2.  Click on 'Manage Products' in that Missing Product data box

           It brings up 4 selections across the top of the list (All Prods, Not Apprvd, Pending and Apprvd)

           Sorry...in my example it does not show any Not Apprvd (I don't know why) but I know there is a

               gtin error in the Pending list, so the example will be from that.

3.  Click into the list of not approved products.  This screen shows 25 prods at a time.

4.  Select (make sure they are all checked)  products and it presents the  EDIT PRODUCTS function.  Click on that.

 

              donnamac_3-1665105511056.png 

 5.  Scroll down to review your products and see if anything pops out to you.  If you mouse over where it says '# Error', a reason pops up.

 

               donnamac_4-1665105561995.png

 

This may get you at least another way of looking at the Google data, in fact ALL the google data.
Unfortunately, it's the only place you can get to this level of the data sent over.
If you don't have many products, this might help you at least fix some of them.

 

One thing to look over is the Custom Product field.  Make sure that:

            - if there is a barcode (gtin) present, that field needs to say FALSE

            - if there is NO barcode (gtin), that field should read TRUE

 

For store owners who have a significant # of products....keep reading:

1. The Google App bulk edit facility basically cannot be used for us.  We have hundreds and hundreds of products.  If you have a fair amount of errors, this is really, really hard to use.

 

These are some of the things that are missing from it's functionality:

  a. it only lists 25 products at a time

  b. the products are in no particular order that I can figure out

  c. once you find a product on a page other than the first...you can fix it, but you can't page forward
       from there, you go back to the list BUT IT GOES BACK TO PAGE 1

  d.  you cannot search or filter to get to the product you need to look at

 

They probably do  not expect many errors, but I had 60-some products they were flagged...but they didn't show up on the not approved area.  They still went over to Google, but were flagged there, and could not be advertised. Support said there were none...even though the screen before that said there are. Augh!  So I tried going 15 pages in to the over 1,500 products we had and found that it works this way . . . basically not useable.)

 

I have requested that these fields be more user friendly from that edit facility.

However, IMO the 'support' group we access via chat does not have access to promote changes.

I believe their main job is to promote more apps and marketing for Shopify plus send us out to the hundreds of pages of documentation to peruse.  I was provided 5 links to documentation, an app and back to the same 'ol support link as a resolution.

He told me it would not be very viable to make it available from the Product Bulk Edit (which is what I requested)

 

marleyandmoose
Tourist
8 0 2

I'm still going back and forth with Shopify on this exact issue.  There is no "identify exists" field in the Google Fields section of my Shopify app, but there is a "custom product" toggle.  I've updated that in Shopify, but that doesn't seem to update the matching field in Google.  Awaiting a reply there and will update when I get it, but in the meantime this may be helpful:

 

To Bulk Update Google Fields in Shopify:

First, follow instructions from previous post.  Here's a review:

Step 1: 

Go to your Google App and click on Manage Products where it notifies that you have errors:

Google-Edit1.png

Step 2: Now select all and edit

Google-Edit2.png

 

Step 3: Now tricky part.. In the URL, scroll all the way to the end until you see &app_context=1780363

 

Copy and paste exactly this "&app_context=1780363" 

It's slightly possible for your Shopify store the number may be different so follow steps 1, 2, 3 to confirm.  You can see in my screen shot I do have a few products with legitimate Google issues because some of the variants are missing bar codes.  I have others that have issues, but are not updating between Google and Shopify but that's another issue that I'm trying to get resolved.

Google-Edit3.png

 

Step 4:

You have two options here.  You can either create your own filter, or go to your home screen and choose to just edit those that have Google Errors.

 

Step 4a: Edit using your own filter

Go to Products, select your own filter, select all, and click edit.  Below I chose to edit a specific vendor.

marleyandmoose_0-1671640205215.png

Step 4b: From the homepage select to edit the products that have google errors.  Then do the same thing as 4a.  Select all, edit.

Google-Edit8.png

 

Step 5:

Another tricky step.  Look at your URL again.  it will start out with

https://[Your Store]/admin/bulk?resource_name=Product&.....&ids=xxx%2Cxxx%2Cxxx

 

Replace everything in the URL between "...Product&" and "&ids..." with "&app_context=1780363" or whatever number you found when you did steps 1,2,3 above

Google-Edit7.png

 

This is what happens when someone with 20+ years of software engineering experience decides to open up a Shopify store.  🙂  It's a bit of a pain to get to this point, but if you have a ton of products like I do and you want to systematically update the Google fields in bulk this is really the only way I've found.  There's no link to do this easily.  Once you do it once though and save the &app_context=1780363 you can skip most of the steps and just paste that into the URL every time you want to edit.

 

Hope this helps everyone.

 

donnamac
Trailblazer
243 5 194

@marleyandmoose

Nice write up you left.  I am also a 20+ software engineer veteran and can say that try not to waste too much time on this.  Shopify's Google App has bugs.  They have known about them for a few years.  We hope to move to a different app that was suggested by Emmanuel Flossie but just haven't had time yet.  In the meantime, we go in and take out the gtins (we 'save' them in the SKU field), save them and let them be sent over to Google, then we put it back and save later.  A real problem, but seems to work more often than not.

 

Emmanuel suggests the following, however, it is pricey at about $25/mth - but it handles feeds to multiple platforms and he claims that he has never had problems with it.

============   This is his recommendation  =================

if your products are custom, you may try : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyvilyMb2Bo

 

For the app https://apps.shopify.com/multiple-google-shopping-feeds, there should be a step by step guide on setting up the feed.

 

And here is a starter guide: https://docs.woolytech.com/category/32-feed-settings

================== end of Emmanuels suggestion (he has helped on many Shopify community issues and I do take what he says very seriously - he is very informative and explains things very well)

 

Even if Shopify does 'correct' this issue, I have no confidence that it will be done correctly or even tested.  I feel it will just create more bugs that will surface afterwards.

 

I keep perusing the apps available to see if there are any that can replace this other than the $25/mth one. 

Good luck

marleyandmoose
Tourist
8 0 2

Sweet thanks!  Yeah I bounced between a few support reps and finally one told me that the custom flag not being sent is a known issue that they're actively working on.  It's funny these platforms attract engineers.  Sometimes the guard rails help prevent me from spinning out on over-customizing and focusing on what's important.

 

Anyway, I haven't tried your work around, but I can totally see that working.  I did try removing products from Google completely and then re-adding them, but that didn't seem to work.

 

Re: the video - Really good, thank you.  I subscribed.   Mind blown with the feed rules, I can't wait to test them out.

 

I also ended up setting up an export using the API and I'm nearly done with my own product feed into Google.  It's taken me about 2 weeks of spare time, but if it works I'm just going to role with that.  The Shopify API is actually pretty robust and easy to use, especially if you're just developing for your own store.  One of the options for the feed into Merchant Center is a Google Sheet as well, which... eh... feels dirty, but it's super easy to write to a Google sheet so I'm going with it.  The canned reporting features in Shopify aren't great so I'm also actually pretty happy I did this because now I have a ton of great data.  I used the REST API and it comes over super normalized so I have to flatten it a bit when reporting on things like metadata fields, but that's a one time set up thing that I'm going to thank myself for down the line.

 

Anyway, thanks again.  Great advice and great resource.  

donnamac
Trailblazer
243 5 194

@marleyandmoose  Kudos to you for setting up your own.  Maybe I'll try that. 

 

The thing that REALLY bugs me is access to ALL the data.  Especially dates: date created, last updated, etc....etc.  When I export data, I should get ALL the fields for that record type.  I've complained about that so much, it is exasperating.

 

Also, when I have a list sorted the way I want it, then export it, it disregards the sort criteria. IT 101 stuff.  Anyway, I'm venting. 

 

I am thinking we may subscribe to the feed recommended while working on a custom feed file of our own.  There is never enough dedicated time to spend developing.

 

Good luck and keep us posted!!

marleyandmoose
Tourist
8 0 2

Yes!  Agreed! That's also why I ended up using the API instead of the export.  I wanted to review our Google metadata in bulk but was told that the metadata fields in the bulk product editor/export didn't align with the actual Google fields that you see when you edit each individual product, and also why I tinkered with the URL from my post earlier.  

 

The other thing that I can do via SQL/Excel is essentially pivot on the tags and create a separate column for each tag value, which has been useful determining coverage of our products over the various segments we want to serve.

 

Anyway, Godspeed!  I'm going to try out the suggestions from the YouTube you posted today.

donnamac
Trailblazer
243 5 194

Hi Dirk...another quick question... you mention the 'identifier_exists' field.

Where is it located and is that what it is actually called?  Or is it the 'custom Product' checkbox?

 

 

donnamac
Trailblazer
243 5 194

@Stuartmb64 

I just had the same problem with dozens of products I just added. Barcodes all scanned in from their tags.  However, Google marked them as invalid.  All we can figure is their barcodes aren't recognized/registered in whatever system Google checks them against.

 

We had to go and mark all those products as CUSTOM so it bypassed the barcode check. 
Too bad Google does not give us more specific errors because we spent a lot of time rechecking the barcodes were right....and they ALL matched their tags.

 

In a pinch...just mark it CUSTOM and go on.  Not worth spending the time to try to figure out...

We all don't have that kind of time....  Just my thoughts.