Google & YouTube: child market's feed label stays empty (0 products) while all other markets sync

Shopify Apps
,
1

Setup: single Shopify store, 7 markets, all served as subfolders on one claimed domain. Google & YouTube app, automatic product sync on, automatic country/language sync on, shipping information sync on.

Since ~1 August, one market — France — has 0 products in Merchant Center. It had ~1,400 approved before that. Its two data sources (feed label “FR”, French and English) both show 0 products.

Important: the products were never disapproved. There was no rise in “limited” or “not approved” during the decline. They simply stopped arriving. The feed label exists but is never populated.

All other markets are unaffected:

Germany / /en /fr feed OK

EU /de-eu /en-eu /fr-eu feed OK

Switzerland /de-ch /en-ch /fr-ch feed OK

UK /en-gb /de-gb feed OK

Norway /en-no /de-no feed OK

USA /en-us /de-us feed OK

France /fr-fr /en-fr /de-fr feed EMPTY

Same construction, same claimed domain, same app settings.

What we have ruled out:

- Market is Active, includes France, currency EUR

- Market default language is French, with a domain (subfolder, HTTP 200, no redirect — and no subdomain exists anywhere, fr.ourdomain is NXDOMAIN)

- Market catalog is Active with 273 products, “automatically include new products” enabled — every other market uses the same catalog construction and syncs fine

- Shipping rates to France exist in Shopify, and Merchant Center already has three shipping policies for France

- Test products are Active, in stock, published to the Google & YouTube sales channel, and in the France catalog

- A controlled resync (unpublish from the channel, wait 60s, republish) of 10 such products changed nothing — still 0 after 12 hours

The one structural difference we can find: France is the only one of our markets nested under another market (parent: our EU market). The others sit directly under the store default.

Google support has been responsive but we are four rounds in. Their specialists did find something concrete — “the feed country and language are currently not syncing to the Merchant Center” for our test products, even though automatic sync, sales channel and product sync are all on — but the investigation then moved to shipping settings, and then to a supposed subdomain misconfiguration that does not exist.

Questions:

1. Has anyone seen a single market’s feed label stay empty like this, particularly a child/nested market?

2. Is a child market expected to get its own feed label at all, or should it inherit from its parent market? Ours has its own label (“FR”) that is simply never filled.

3. Is there a known issue with country/language sync for nested markets following the Content API → Merchant API migration?

Any pointers appreciated — happy to provide more detail.

2

Given what you’ve already ruled out, I’d stop treating this as a product-attribute issue and first confirm whether the France offers are being emitted at all.

With both FR data sources at zero items, GTIN, price, availability, and shipping checks are downstream. For one exact test variant, compare France with the same variant in a working market and capture:

  • Shopify variant ID
  • Merchant Center offer ID
  • API data source ID
  • feed label and content language
  • target country and final landing URL
  • UTC timestamp of the most recent insert or update attempt

The key question for Shopify or Google support is: did the Google & YouTube app send an offer using the FR feed label, and if so, which data source received it?

Until that trace is available, I wouldn’t reinstall the app or change the working markets. Your controlled republish test already suggests that another broad resync is unlikely to add useful evidence.

If no FR offer was emitted, the failure boundary is likely on the Shopify or integration side. If Google received it, the next step is to identify the data-source, feed-label, or language-routing failure.

3

The fact that both FR sources stay at zero, with no disapprovals, points to an offer-routing failure rather than a product-data or shipping issue. I would stop changing catalog fields and trace one exact variant end to end.

For the same Shopify variant that appears in a working market, ask Shopify Support to provide the outbound offer ID, data source ID, feed label, content language, target country, and last attempted update timestamp for France. Then ask Google to confirm whether that exact offer reached Merchant Center and, if so, which source received it.

That creates a clean boundary: no FR offer emitted means a Shopify/Google & YouTube app issue; an emitted offer that Google received but did not place under FR means data-source or label routing. I would also ask Shopify explicitly whether nested markets support independent feed labels after the Merchant API migration. Avoid reinstalling the app for now, because it may remove useful evidence without testing the nested-market hypothesis.

4

This is an interesting case because the most worrying part seems to be that nothing was actually marked as disapproved — the products simply stopped reaching the France feed.

How did you first notice that the ~1,400 products had disappeared? Was there any warning/traffic change that alerted you, or did you only discover it after manually checking Merchant Center?

And roughly how long could something like this have remained unnoticed if you hadn’t checked?

I’m curious because it seems like the bigger operational risk may not be fixing the feed once you know it’s broken, but knowing quickly that one market has suddenly stopped behaving differently from the others.

5

@stffndtz the timing here lines up a bit too well with google shutting down the old Content API for Shopping (sunsets Aug 18). when the Google & YouTube app migrates a market to the new Merchant API it spins up a fresh per country data source, the old Content API one just goes inactive with whatever was still mid flight on it.

worth asking Shopify support point blank whether your FR data source has actually completed that flip to Merchant API or is still sitting on the old (dying) Content API connection, since every other market clearly already made the jump. if France is the one still stuck on the old pipe thats exactly the mechanism that would produce same config everywhere but one silently empty feed, without ever showing up as disapproved, since nothing ever leaves the dead pipe in the first place.

worth checking that before another round of google support poking at shipping settings, feels like the wrong layer.

- Hamid

6

Thanks all — genuinely useful & very much appreciated; it moved things along. Update plus answers below!

@HamidEjaz — I checked this directly, and it’s a good hypothesis that turns out not to hold: both France sources have already flipped to Merchant API. They’re just empty:

Shopify App API | Feed label: FR | Merchant API | 0 | France | French
Shopify App API | Feed label: FR | Merchant API | 0 | France | English

The only Content API source left in the account is a legacy “Content API XYZ” with 3 old items. So France isn’t stuck on the dying pipe — the new pipe was built for it and never carried anything. Which is arguably stranger.

kekk1016 JaumeG (unable to mention more than 2 people currently) — agreed, this is offer routing, not product data. Here’s what I can see from the merchant side:

  • both FR data sources exist, correct target country (France), correct content languages (fr and en), correct feed label
  • both show 0 items and no “last update” timestamp at all
  • the same variant syncs fine into six other markets

What I can’t see is the outbound side: whether the app ever emitted an offer under the FR feed label. That trace only Shopify or Google can produce, and I’ve asked for exactly that.

Worth noting: Google’s own specialists already stated “the feed country and language are currently not syncing to the Merchant Center” for our test products, with automatic sync, sales channel and product sync all enabled. That reads as support for the routing-failure interpretation.

Unfortunately the case then moved on to shipping settings, and after that to three separate instructions to fix a market domain that is already correct — which honestly is super frustrating, since all three amounted to asking us to drop the /fr-fr subfolder and put the France market on our bare root domain. That root is occupied by our German market, so it isn’t something Shopify would even let us enter.

If you land here with the same symptom: it’s worth pushing back on that answer rather than restructuring your markets. Six of our markets run on subfolders of the same claimed domain and sync fine — including our German market’s English variant at /en, which currently carries 1,560 items. If a subfolder suffix broke syncing, that source would be empty
too.

JaumeG (cannot mention more people here unfortunately) — your question about whether nested markets support independent feed labels after the Merchant API migration is still the one nobody has answered, and it remains my leading hypothesis. France is our only child market (parent: our EU market). It has its own feed label, “FR”, which is simply never filled. I will let you know once I have an answer for that.

@vedasuite — fair question, and the honest answer is not flattering. We found it by manually opening Merchant Center for an unrelated reason, not through any alert. There was no warning, no disapproval, no error, and no notification of any kind. France is a small share of our traffic, so the revenue dip was well inside normal variance — it would not have stood out in analytics for a long time. Realistically this could have run for months unnoticed. We had no feed-health monitoring; we do now.

I’d say that’s the real lesson here: a feed that silently stops being populated produces no signal anywhere. A disapproval at least gets flagged.

One ask: if anyone runs a NESTED market (a market whose parent is another market rather than the store default), could you check whether its feed label actually populates in Merchant Center? Even a single confirmation either way would settle this.

Context: the Content API sunsets tomorrow, 18 August. France has been at zero since 1 August.

7

@kekke1016 I have summarized my answer into 1 Post, I was unable to tag you directly. Sorry about that!

8

@JaumeG I have consolidated my answers into 1 Post, but was unable to mention you. Thank you for your answer, it is our leading hypothesis right now and I have just reached out to Google Support with that particular question again since it may have been lost since last asking about it (August 12th).

9

Small follow-up — while re-checking the data sources I noticed something that sharpens this considerably.

The account has 21 primary sources, and they come in pairs. For each market the Google & YouTube app has created a NAMED source that is empty, plus an UNNAMED source carrying the same feed label that holds the actual offers:

Feed label EUR_000000000000
Shopify App API - CH-DE 0 items
Shopify App API 1,527 items
Shopify App API 1,520 items
Shopify App API 1,532 items

Feed label EUR_000000000000
Shopify App API - GB-EN 0 items
Shopify App API 1,551 items

Feed label DE
Shopify App API - DE-EN 0 items
Shopify App API 1,564 items
Shopify App API 1,560 items

Feed label EUR_000000000000
Shopify App API - AT-DE 0 items
Shopify App API - EU-EN 0 items
Shopify App API 1,558 items
Shopify App API 1,556 items
Shopify App API 1,557 items

Feed label FR
Shopify App API 0 items (France, French)
Shopify App API 0 items (France, English)

So the empty sources are not the anomaly — every market has them. They look like scaffolding left over from the Merchant API migration.

The anomaly is this: every feed label in the account appears on at least one populated source. FR appears only on empty ones.

That reads as a two-step process — create the per-market source, then populate a source carrying that label. For France the first step happens and the second never does. Which fits the “created but never routed into” picture rather than anything to do with product data, shipping or domains.

Still no answer on whether nested markets are supported for independent feed labels after the Merchant API migration - but the DE one seems to confirm that it actually is possible.

Thanks again to everyone helping out here!

10

Hey @stffndtz

The parent-child nesting is the most likely culprit. France being the only market nested under EU means the Google & YouTube app handles its feed generation differently from all your other markets, and something in that path broke around August 1 (probably a G&Y app update, since the structure didn’t change on your end).

Building on what Google support found about the country/language not syncing: the products are almost certainly being processed by the app, just not routed to the FR feed label. Check your EU market’s data sources in Merchant Center. Did they gain unexpected products around the same date France dropped to zero? If yes, the FR products are being absorbed there instead of going to the FR feed label.

If you want to test the fix without waiting for Google to escalate:

  1. Settings > Markets in your Shopify admin
  2. Move France out from under EU, make it a top-level standalone market alongside UK, Norway, etc.
  3. Wait a full sync cycle (24-48h)
  4. Check whether the FR data sources start populating

The unpublish/republish you tried wouldn’t have changed anything here. The products weren’t rejected or flagged, they were just misrouted at the feed level, so republishing put them back through the same broken path.

Let me know what the EU data source shows.

11

Hi @stffndtz ,

We are experiencing a similar issue. Our Shopify markets are configured as both direct and nested:

  • Nested: Germany, France (under EU)
  • Direct: AU, NZ
  • Other: Under International

Products are disappearing from GMC across all Shopify markets—not just the nested ones.

I’ve reached out to both Shopify Support and GMC Support, but no resolution yet.

Current status:

  • Main market (USA): Syncing correctly every day
  • Shopify Markets feed: Stopped syncing

Did you find any solution?

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12

Hi @kunjalp ,

very sorry to hear - and no, we have not yet found a solution. My last contact was August 19th with an estimated 5 business days until the next update but so far nothing.

I just reached out again to ask and I will update this post once I know more.

13

Hey @Maxime_StoreCanary

I have already discussed this internally but we are admanent to change our supposedly correct configuration. We use child markets as a means to reduce setup and maintenance time by inheritance.

Thanks again for proposing this solution but until we know for sure that this is the culprit we will not act on it.

16

@stffndtz / whoever’s still stuck - adding onto what’s already here rather than repeating the un-nest test.

[email removed]Maxime_StoreCanary nesting hypothesis is still the best cheap A/B for YOUR case (France only empty, EU parent). Worth doing if you’re willing - one market out from under EU, 24-48h, see if FR populates. Unpublish/republish won’t fix routing.

But look at the other reply in this thread: nested AND direct markets stuck, USA fine, sources sitting on Merchant API with “Needs update” and real item counts. That means this isn’t only “child markets broken.” Something wider is wrong with the G&Y → Merchant API write path for non-primary markets after ~Aug 1.

So for support, stop arguing shipping/subdomains and force this boundary:

  1. For ONE SKU that should be in FR: did the app emit an offer with feed label FR? Offer ID + data source ID + last insert/update timestamp.
  2. If emit = no → Shopify/G&Y bug. If emit = yes and GMC still 0 / Needs update forever → Google routing/ingest.
  3. Check EU count around Aug 1 - if it jumped when FR died, offers got absorbed by parent. If not, they vanished.

Google’s own Shopify sync note also matters: same country in multiple markets gets treated as a Standalone Country (2-letter label). France under EU = overlap. That can create the FR scaffold and never fill it.

Don’t reinstall the app yet - you lose the empty FR sources as evidence. Don’t mass-republish. One structural test (un-nest OR remove FR from EU region) + the outbound trace. Everything else is noise.

If anyone un-nested and FR came back, please say so - thread still has no confirmed fix.