Product feed management for Google, Meta, TikTok and AI shopping: required fields, disapprovals and automation

Most stores that advertise on Google, Meta or TikTok, or want to show up in ChatGPT, run the same catalogue through four or five product feeds, each with its own field names and values. When one drifts out of date, products get disapproved and ads stop, often unnoticed. Product feed management is the work of keeping all of those feeds complete, accurate and current, ideally without anyone exporting spreadsheets by hand.

This guide is for store owners and marketing leads on Shopify or a custom site who are tired of fixing the same disapprovals every week. Every platform rule here was checked against official documentation in October 2026.

I build e-commerce automation and integrations on official APIs. I do not run ad campaigns, so this is the data side. For the bigger picture on AI shopping, read my guide to agentic commerce for online stores.

One catalogue, five feeds

A product feed is a structured file, or a stream of API calls, describing each item you sell: what it is, its price, its stock, its page and its images. Google Merchant Center uses it for Shopping ads and free listings, Meta and TikTok for catalogue ads. Since 2025, AI assistants have joined the list: OpenAI accepts merchant feeds for ChatGPT, and Google's agentic checkout builds on Merchant Center data.

The trap is treating each feed as its own project. The sensible structure is one master catalogue, usually your Shopify admin or your own database, with every feed generated from it.

Required attributes on Google, Meta, TikTok and ChatGPT

Every platform asks for similar facts, but names and accepted values differ. That is where hand-built feeds break.

Platform	Required fields	Worth knowing
Google Merchant Center	id, title, description, link, image_link, availability, price; brand for most new products; condition for used or refurbished items	GTIN where the manufacturer assigned one; item_group_id for variants in several countries
Meta catalogue	id, title, description, availability, condition, price, link, image_link, brand	Price as 9.99 USD; images at least 500 × 500 pixels
TikTok catalogue	sku_id, title, description, availability, condition, price, link, image_link, brand	Nine required fields, 27 optional
ChatGPT (OpenAI)	item_id, title, description, url, brand, seller_name, image_url, availability, price	Rows with missing or unrecognised values are rejected

Sources, checked on 15 October 2026: Google's product data specification, Meta's catalogue reference, TikTok's catalogue parameters and OpenAI's feed specification.

The identifier is id, sku_id or item_id. Google writes availability as in_stock, Meta and TikTok as in stock, and OpenAI uses pre_order where TikTok says preorder. A feed that works on Google will not load on TikTok unchanged.

GTINs deserve care. Google recommends a GTIN for every product the manufacturer assigned one to, and disapproves products with an incorrect one. Its advice is blunt: "When in doubt don't provide a GTIN". If you make your own products, you do not need one; Google then expects the brand and, where there is no GTIN, an MPN. Never generate barcodes to fill a column.

Images are tightening. Google has announced a 500 × 500 pixel minimum for all product images from 31 January 2027, and it already disapproves images with promotional text, watermarks or added logos.

Price and availability: the disapprovals most stores hit

Google crawls your product pages and compares them with your feed. If a page says out of stock while the feed says in stock, the product is disapproved, and Google's help centre warns that too many availability mismatches can lead to account suspension. Price works the same way.

• Update the feed when the store changes. Google recommends scheduling updates to coincide with changes on your site, or pushing them through its Merchant API straight after a change.
• Do not rely on automatic item updates alone. Google can correct price and availability from your landing pages, and the feature is on by default, but Google says automations "aren't a replacement for regular updates".
• Do not use out of stock to pause a product. Use the pause attribute instead, for up to 14 days.
• Keep the feed fresh. Products expire from Merchant Center 30 days after their last refresh, so a feed that stops updating quietly empties your account.

On Shopify, the mismatch that comes up most in the community forums is variants: the feed sends one variant's price while the page shows another. The fixes are variant-specific URLs and structured data for the selected variant.

Feed rules and supplemental feeds

Attribute rules (Google's new name for feed rules) transform data as it arrives: set, extract, find and replace, append, calculate or split a field, with conditions so a rule touches only some products. Typical uses are building titles from brand, type and colour, or clearing placeholders such as "n/a". They need the Advanced data source management add-on.

Supplemental data sources add or override attributes on products that already exist in your main feed. They cannot add or remove products, and their IDs must match the primary feed exactly. They suit custom labels for campaigns, corrected GTINs, or the new attributes Google announced in January 2026 for conversational shopping, such as answers to common product questions and compatible accessories.

Both are useful patches, and both hide problems: a title fixed in Merchant Center stays wrong in Meta, TikTok and ChatGPT. If a fix belongs everywhere, make it in the master catalogue.

Feeds for AI shopping: ChatGPT and Google's UCP

ChatGPT. OpenAI's getting-started guide says feed onboarding is currently for approved partners, who apply through chatgpt.com/merchants. Its file upload specification describes a full catalogue snapshot pushed by SFTP at least daily, with Parquet preferred, plus updates during the day through an API. OpenAI can also accept a Google-compatible feed if it confirms this with you. Shopify merchants are covered through Shopify's own catalogue integration.

Google. The Universal Commerce Protocol, announced on 11 January 2026, lets shoppers buy from eligible US retailers inside AI Mode and Gemini. Google's merchant guide tells retailers to use their existing Merchant Center feeds, so a clean Merchant Center feed is the entry ticket for Google's AI shopping as well as for Shopping ads.

The AI channels want the same facts as the ad channels, plus fresher stock and prices.

Automating product feed management from Shopify or your own catalogue

On Shopify, start with the native channels. The Google & YouTube app syncs products to Merchant Center, the Facebook & Instagram app syncs eligible products to Meta, and the official TikTok app treats Shopify as the source of truth for the catalogue. For one store with a tidy catalogue, these apps are often enough.

Custom automation makes sense when:

• your catalogue lives outside Shopify, in an ERP, a spreadsheet or a custom database;
• you sell the same products across several stores or marketplaces;
• prices or stock change many times a day and nightly files are too slow;
• you need per-channel titles, labels or exclusions that native apps cannot express.

The shape I recommend: one master catalogue; a mapping layer per channel that renames fields and converts values; validation that rejects a product before it is sent, not after a platform disapproves it; then delivery through Google's Merchant API, Meta's scheduled feed fetches (hourly, daily or weekly), TikTok's catalogue, and SFTP for OpenAI if you are accepted. Price and stock changes go out as events rather than waiting for the next full file.

If you already run a custom script, one date matters. Google's Content API for Shopping reached its sunset on 18 August 2026, and requests without an extension began failing intermittently from 1 September 2026. Integrations need to move to the Merchant API; stores on platforms such as Shopify are migrated by the platform.

Common disapprovals and how to fix them

Problem	Usual cause	Fix
Mismatched price	Sale ended, variant mismatch, tax shown differently	Push price changes at once; variant URLs; matching structured data
Mismatched availability	Feed updated nightly, stock sold out during the day	Event-driven stock updates from one stock source
Incorrect GTIN	Guessed or reused barcodes	Manufacturer GTINs only; brand plus MPN otherwise
Image rejected	Too small, text overlays, watermarks	Clean images, at least 500 × 500 pixels
Products expired	Feed stopped updating	An alert when a feed has not refreshed

If you sell on several channels, multichannel inventory sync is the foundation feeds sit on.

What product feed management costs

• Native channel apps are free to install and cover one store feeding Google, Meta and TikTok.
• Feed management tools charge a subscription and add rules and templates across many channels.
• Custom automation fits when data comes from several systems or must update within minutes. A feed pipeline from your own catalogue is the kind of single automation my marketplace MVP plan covers, from $2,500; keeping stock and orders in sync across two or more channels is the Flexible plan, from $5,500. Both are starting prices on the pricing page, and every project gets a fixed quote after a short brief. The custom automation section shows the kind of work involved, and my guide to e-commerce automation helps you decide what to automate first.

FAQ

How often should I update my product feed?

At least daily for the full feed, and as soon as possible when price or stock changes. Google expires products 30 days after their last refresh and disapproves products whose availability or price does not match the landing page. OpenAI's file upload guide recommends a full snapshot at least once a day, with intraday updates through its API. If prices or stock move during the day, event-driven updates are safer than one nightly file.

Can I use one product feed for Google, Meta, TikTok and ChatGPT?

You can use one master catalogue, but not one identical file. The platforms ask for similar facts with different field names and values: Google uses id and in_stock, TikTok uses sku_id and in stock, OpenAI uses item_id and pre_order. The reliable approach is one source of truth with a small mapping layer per channel, so each feed is generated automatically and a correction made once reaches every channel.

What should I do if my products don't have GTINs?

Leave the GTIN empty rather than inventing one. Google says products without a manufacturer-assigned GTIN do not need one, and an incorrect GTIN gets the product disapproved. For your own products, submit the brand and, where Google asks for an identifier, an MPN. Meta recommends a GTIN only when you are confident it is correct, and TikTok treats it as optional. Never reuse a GTIN across different products.

If your feeds keep breaking, send me a short brief: where your catalogue lives, which channels you feed, roughly how many products and variants, and which errors come back most often. You can start with the marketplace MVP plan, see the e-commerce automation work I do, or read how AI listing pipelines fill missing attributes before they reach a feed.