Hi all, we are correcting a few issues for a client but have come across a situation whereby products are being given Google Merchant Centre error because of ‘Extraneous text’’ (Remove extraneous text, such as promotions, from this value).
The way Shopify sends the metadata to Google is to take the product title (Ex: Organic Oatmeal Bars) and paste it to the variant title (Ex: 1 Box (40 Bars) (25% OFF)), resulting in a long 'title (i.e. ‘Organic Oatmeal Bars, 1 Box (40 Bars) (25% OFF)’). The client needs the (25% OFF) in the title for a variety of reasons, but because it includes a promotion it gets flagged (or because it is too long, being given the ‘‘Value truncated (too long)’’ error).
Is there any way to fix this by changing how Shopify sends the Metadata GMC, to only put the product title and not the added variant title? We suspect not but thought we would ask.
Cheers.
WhiteWater Web
Hi @WhiteWater_Web ,
You’re dealing with a common issue where the way Shopify sends metadata to Google can lead to errors in the Google Merchant Center, particularly when it comes to product titles with promotional text. In your case, including promotional text “(25% OFF)”, is causing the ‘Extraneous text’ error.
Fortunately, there is a solution to this. In the Google & YouTube sales channel settings within Shopify, you can modify the data that is sent to Google Merchant Center. Specifically, you can change the setting so that only the product title is sent, instead of the SEO description.
We have a detailed post on our blog that guides you through the steps to make this change. This should resolve the issue in the Google Merchant Center. You can find the instructions and more details at: https://strongseo.app/google-merchant-center-error-extraneous-text/.
Hope this helps!
Thank you so much! With the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend we have been very busy - and this helps.
Your time is valuable though; if you can help us solve this we would be very happy to compensate you! Please reach out to us via email or DM.
Thank you.
WhiteWater Web
Use feed rules to search and replace text. More info: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7450276?hl=en
Or if you don’t want to use that you can use an app such as https://apps.shopify.com/multiple-google-shopping-feeds
Which also allows you to remove parts of the titles using regular expressions.
With either of your suggested approaches have you personally seen other ‘penalties’ arise? We have seen this with other methods (unrelated to this question) when trying to fix GMC issues. GMC can be finicky 
Let us know, thanks.
WhiteWater Web
Yes, products will become disapproved.