After having a wonderful week of sales, abruptly Google unpublished my products from their listings because after 2 years, almost all of them, suddenly have a GTIN missing. Well, they don’t. All my products have SKU and Barcode (ISBN, UPC, GTIN, etc.) numbers FILLED. Always HAVE.
I chatted with a google support person and he told me this:
“…duplicate the column and rename the title to gtin instead? So we’ll try to extract it via feed rules.”
I did that. I basically duplicated the “Variant Barcode” column in my master sheet and named it GTIN - but nothing changed.
Can someone help me asap? Google is trying to help me as well. I thought I’d ask this community as you may all be more helpful.
To clarify, do all of your products still have their individual GTIN within the product pages on your Shopify admin?
If you navigate to your Google Merchant Centre Account (GMCA), is this where the GTINs are missing?
You can check this by going to the Products > All Products section. Under the GTIN column, you can see if there are any products or variants with a blank GTIN. If this is the case, this might mean that there’s an issue with the GTIN in not syncing over from Shopify over to your GMCA. We won’t know for sure however unless we take a look at your account. Because we aren’t yet able to provide account-specific support within our Community Forums, it’s best to reach out to our Support Team. You can visit our Help Centre here, and log in to your account to create a support request. From there, our Support Advisor team can assist in taking a look at your account, and if required they can also escalate the matters to our dedicated Google team internally.
Kimi, thank you for your reply. I opened a ticket with a Shopify Expert as you suggested but I think they are under the impression that google should support me. Google says the otherwise. The only issue here is that my primary feed data is not syncing to Google Merchant account with GTIN, MPN, Brand etc attributes in place already. I had no issues before, made no changes to my feed recently and the problem appeared out of nowhere in the midst of heaving shopping days. I posted a job in upworks to see if someone can take a look at my account as you mentioned as well. I think my feed rules in google should be revised. Also, I cant be the only person in Shopify platform having this issue all of a sudden. My MPN and GTIN fields have their attributes on my PDP admin area. They are all correct. What happened suddenly to cause these errors?
@Soysauce1@Kimi_2 you are not the only one this is affecting. I logged into the Community Forum to see if there were any solutions as this exact same thing is happening to my store on Shopify. It has slowly been building up over the last week or so. When a product sells, it is now showing in Admin as “this product didn’t publish to Google”. It had previously published to Google and now they are not. I am suspecting the feed file between Shopify and GMC because nothing else has changed. I first noticed it in Search Console they I had warnings for “brand” missing and my products are all books which have brands like Harper Collins, etc and they are all there. When I look in the file they are there.
@Kimi_2 I will have a chat session with one of our local Shopify Support people here on Monday to see if they can assist. It is very frustrating leading into Xmas and as products are selling they are showing as unpublished on Google.
I’m having this issue too - all my products have GTINs and everything is set up correct, however, my Shopify page and my Google Merchant account are now showing over half my products are not published due to GTIN missing??
I spoke with Shopify support and they told me they hadn’t had anyone else report this -however, the guy I spoke to went through my account and couldn’t find any ‘mistakes’ so he has 'escalated my support ticket to the technical team.
According to him there appears to be a syncing error between Shopify and Google Merchant - but he couldn’t tell me what this issue was yet. He said the technical team would need to look at it further. I am actually kind of happy others are experiencing this too as this should mean that Shopify will make it a priority to get it sorted.
My issue is resolved by Shopify team, saying I need to take this up with Google. Google no longer accepts feed uploads. So now what? We are on this platform. What am I suppose to do? As a business owner, this is impossible. I am hiring help for $$$$$$$$
@Soysauce1@CanineSpirit I logged the issue with Shopify support as well and Swali couldn’t find any issue and said he would escalate to the technical team. I haven’t heard anything else.
When I log into GMC my products are there, including the new ones I entered into Shopify yesterday, but they don’t have the GTIN in that field.
So the feed from Shopify is working but must be faulty in relation to the GTIN field. I did come across another issue logged in this forum where the resolution was to enter a specific line of code into the product page in relation to GTIN. I am no technical person so I don’t touch any code.
Are we all so supposed to hire a technical person to fix this issue which isn’t only affecting my store? Also, how and why did the issue arise?
I am on the Debut theme - what themes are you on? Is it related to a particular theme?
Leading into Xmas I want to get it resolved asap but it would appear we may need to fix this ourselves. I may reach out to a Shopify expert in NZ and see what their opinion is.
Something has definitely changed in the way this works recently because I’m having exactly the same issue. It used to be that as long as Barcode (ISBN, UPC, GTIN, etc.) was entered the product would publish on Google but now when ever a product is sold it gets unpublished from Google saying "Gtin is required for this product."
The issue is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to add a Gtin for each variant, and only at the product level which is not very accurate in my case, as different variants have different Gtins.
Hi @pcebo You can add individual GTINs at variant level - you do this on the product pages under each variant. Shopify call it ‘barcode’ but this is the GTIN.
@KirstyRotorua I’m on an Out of the Sandbox theme - however, I personally don’t feel this is a theme issue?
I went in and requested manual reviews on Google Merchant for each individual SKU. This seems to have improved it on Google Merchant and they are approved by Google.
On my Shopify page though it still says many products aren’t listed.
@LukeGGB@Soysauce1@CanineSpirit@pcebo I have just checked the RAW data feed in GMC and you are correct. There are no GTINs listed in it so who has made any changes to the Content API that is now not bringing the GTINs. Is that Shopify or Google? Also when I check the data in GMC I note that the SKU that I have in Shopify is not listed but in fact in the SKU field in GMC it is a Shopify ID so in Shopify it is SKU 9781529109481 Barcode 9781529109481 but in GMC it is
ID or SKU
shopify_NZ_6611340787763_39561811918899
I have just checked from this morning and from 63 products being affected, it is now saying 772 products are affected. Soon likely it will be all my products, which is not great leading into Xmas. @CanineSpirit did you check your RAW data feed to see if the GTIN was in there before doing a manual review? I did and they are not showing in the RAW data feed to Google so I don’t want to do a manual review and they decline it because the GTIN is not in there. @Kimi_2 who is responsible for the Content API as that would appear where the issue is. I have the GTIN in Shopify but it is not in the RAW data field going into Google. How do we fix that?
@Luke_GGB Thank you so much for sharing your solution. Going back in my chat script with Google, this exact solution was recommended to me but I was afraid i would lose my approvals and/or seo. Have you had any issues?
@Soysauce1@Luke_GGB@CanineSpirit@pcebo thanks for the updates. I am hesitant to do the disconnect and deletion in GMC in case like @Soysauce1 says we loose approvals for the products, etc. Particularly this close to Christmas as we are still getting people searching and coming through from Google.
@Luke_GGB have you noticed any drop off in Google traffic with the disconnection and reconnection? I also note that you upgraded your theme to the latest. I haven’t done that yet as I want to test it thoroughly but I do wonder if the mapping in the Content API has changed slightly for the new/updated themes and the GTIN is not in the same place?
