A product feed is the data a store sends to a shopping channel to describe what it sells: the id, title, price, availability, link and image of every product. The data can arrive as a text or XML file, or through an API. Channels use it to match products to searches and to show them in ads and listings.
Why it matters for a Shopify store
The feed is what the channel sees. The product page is what the shopper sees after the click. Google’s product data specification says incorrect, inaccurate or missing product information can cause disapprovals, limited eligibility and incorrect displays.
Google marks these attributes as always required: id, title, description, link, image link, availability and price. Brand is required for most new products. MPN is required only when the product has no manufacturer-assigned GTIN.
Meta’s catalog fields are close. Required fields are id, title, description, availability, condition, price, link, image link and brand. Meta says that if a required field is missing or badly formatted, products may not upload. Duplicate ids are ignored.
How it commonly goes wrong
- Price or availability in the feed differs from the landing page. Google calls the result a preemptive item disapproval and says it needs a review to resolve.
- The landing page is slow, unavailable or redirects to a generic page. Google lists these as causes of item issues.
- robots.txt blocks Googlebot from the product page.
- A required field is empty, or a value is in the wrong format. Meta, for example, expects a price as a number, a space and a three-letter currency code.
- A feed app lags behind the store after a price or stock change.
Where Rabbot fits
Rabbot cross-checks what your feed says against what your storefront shows, product by product: price, availability, required identifiers and missing product data. On paid plans it also reads Google and Meta verdicts every day, across 18 feed and channel checks (TikTok in Beta). The Free plan cannot connect channels. See What feed monitoring is, the Google channel and the Meta channel.
Related terms
A GTIN is a feed attribute. A supplemental feed adds to a main feed. A disapproved product is what a failing feed can produce on Google. Meta feeds land in a catalog managed through Meta Commerce Manager.