The Diagnostics Dashboard: An Overview
In Google Merchant Center, the Diagnostics section is your control center for feed health and compliance status. You'll find it under Products → Diagnostics in the main navigation.
The dashboard has three primary views:
- Item issues — Product-level disapprovals and warnings, organized by issue type
- Feed issues — Problems with your feed file itself (processing errors, fetch failures)
- Account issues — Policy violations that affect the entire account, not just individual products
The most important number to watch is the active products count at the top — how many of your products are currently approved and eligible to serve. If this number drops suddenly, you have an urgent problem.
In the newer version of GMC (2024+), some diagnostics have moved to the Products section under the "All products" view, with filtering by issue type. Both places show the same underlying data — the layout just differs between account versions.
Understanding Severity Levels
GMC uses a tiered severity system. Understanding what each level means is critical to prioritizing your work:
Disapproval (Critical)
The product is not serving and will not appear in Shopping results. This is the highest priority to fix. Disapprovals are always specific to a policy violation — you'll see the reason listed.
Warning (High)
The product is currently serving but has a data quality issue that Google has flagged. If you don't fix it within the stated timeframe, it may become a disapproval. Treat warnings as countdown timers.
Notification (Medium)
Informational issues that can reduce performance but won't immediately cause disapproval. Missing optional attributes like color, size, or age_group often appear here. They're worth fixing for better targeting and ranking.
Account Suspension (Critical — Account Level)
The entire account is suspended and no products are serving. This appears as a banner at the top of your GMC dashboard. See our guide on what to do when your GMC account is suspended.
Account-Level Issues
Account-level issues are the most serious. They prevent all products from serving, or flag the entire account for review. The most common ones:
Misrepresentation
Google's most common account suspension reason. Covers misleading business practices, unrealistic claims, hidden costs, and checkout experiences that don't match what was advertised. See our detailed guide on GMC misrepresentation.
Circumventing systems
Attempting to manipulate Google's review systems, create duplicate accounts after suspension, or use cloaking to show different content to Google's crawlers than to users. This is a severe violation with a very difficult path to reinstatement.
Dangerous products
Selling products that are prohibited in the target country or that violate Google's product policies (counterfeit goods, certain weapons, etc.).
Website policy violations
Missing required pages (return policy, privacy policy, contact page), broken checkout, or HTTPS issues. These are usually the most fixable account-level issues. See our website requirements guide.
Product-Level Issues (Disapprovals)
These appear in the "Item issues" section and show how many products are affected by each error type. The most common product-level disapproval reasons:
Price mismatch
The price in your feed doesn't match the price on your product landing page. Google's crawler checks this regularly. Even a 1-cent difference can trigger this.
Availability mismatch
You marked a product as "in stock" in your feed, but it's sold out on your website, or you're showing "out of stock" when the product is available.
Invalid GTIN
The GTIN (barcode) you provided doesn't exist in Google's product database, or it's assigned to a different product entirely.
Missing required attribute
Certain product categories require specific attributes. Apparel needs color, size, age_group, and gender. Electronics often need brand and MPN.
Image issues
Promotional text overlays, watermarks, placeholder images, images under the minimum resolution, or images that don't load when Google's crawler fetches them.
Feed-Level Issues
Feed-level issues prevent Google from processing your feed file correctly. They appear in the "Feed issues" tab:
Fetch failure
Google couldn't access your feed URL. Common causes: the URL changed, the server was down during the scheduled fetch, authentication is required (and credentials weren't saved in GMC), or your hosting blocked Googlebot.
Parse failure
Your feed file has a formatting error — broken XML, invalid CSV delimiters, encoding issues (e.g., characters outside UTF-8). Google can't read the file.
No products in feed
Google fetched the file but found zero valid products. This often means a structural issue with your feed format or a platform export error.
File size exceeded
Uncompressed feed files over 4GB, or compressed files over 1GB, will fail to process. For very large catalogs, split your feed or use supplemental feeds.
15 Critical Errors and How to Fix Them
Price mismatch between feed and landing page
Google crawled your product page and found a different price than what's in your feed.
Fix: Ensure your platform syncs prices to GMC in real-time. For Shopify, check your Google & YouTube app sync settings. For WooCommerce, re-configure your feed plugin. Use a supplemental feed to override prices if your primary feed lags. See our guide on feed optimization.
Invalid value [availability]
Your feed is sending an availability value that GMC doesn't recognize.
Fix: Only use Google's accepted values: in stock, out of stock, preorder, backorder. Many platforms use different terminology — use feed rules to map your platform's values to Google's.
Unrecognized value [google_product_category]
Your category ID doesn't match Google's official taxonomy.
Fix: Download the official Google taxonomy and use the exact numeric ID for your product's category. Don't use text names — use IDs.
Prohibited product: adult content
Products that imply adult content are being submitted without the required adult attribute or are prohibited outright.
Fix: For products that qualify (certain lingerie, etc.), add adult: yes to your feed and ensure your account is configured for adult content. For products that are outright prohibited, remove them from the feed.
Missing recommended attribute [color]
Apparel products are missing color data, reducing their eligibility for certain Shopping filters.
Fix: Add a color attribute to your feed. Use feed rules to map it from your platform's color/variant field if it exists under a different name.
Image crawl failure
Google couldn't fetch your product images from the URLs in your feed.
Fix: Check that image URLs are publicly accessible, load without authentication, and return a valid image (not a redirect to a placeholder). Check your CDN or server for any IP blocking that might affect Googlebot.
Landing page not crawlable
Google's crawler can't access your product landing pages — they're blocked in robots.txt, require login, or are returning errors.
Fix: Check your robots.txt to ensure Googlebot isn't blocked. Make sure product pages don't require login or cookies set by JavaScript. Test with Google's URL Inspection tool in Search Console.
Incorrect product identifier [identifier_exists]
You set identifier_exists: false but your products do have GTINs or MPNs, or vice versa.
Fix: Only use identifier_exists: false for truly custom products (handmade, vintage, bundles). For branded products with GTINs, provide the real GTIN. Misusing this attribute is a policy violation.
Mismatched title/description
Your product title or description doesn't match the content on the landing page.
Fix: Ensure your feed pulls the same title as what appears on the product page. Feed rules can help normalize titles if your platform exports them differently than they display on-site.
Promotional overlay on image
Your product images have text overlays like "SALE" or "20% OFF" — this violates GMC image policy.
Fix: Upload clean product images without any text overlays, badges, or watermarks. Use the additional_image_link for lifestyle images; keep the main image_link clean.
Invalid GTIN
The GTIN you submitted doesn't exist in Google's product database or has incorrect check digit.
Fix: Verify your GTINs against the GS1 database. For private label products without manufacturer GTINs, set identifier_exists: false and provide brand + MPN instead.
Shipping information missing
Your products are missing shipping data — either there's no shipping configured in GMC account settings or the shipping attribute isn't in your feed.
Fix: Set up shipping in GMC under Shipping & returns → Shipping services. Or add a shipping attribute directly to your feed with country, service, and price.
Automatic item updates applied
GMC has automatically updated your product data (typically price or availability) because your feed was out of sync with your landing page.
Note: This isn't an error — it means GMC saved your products from disapproval by crawling your site. But it indicates your feed is lagging. Fix your sync frequency to avoid Google having to do this.
Destination URL not working
Your product landing page URL is returning a 404, 500, or redirect to a non-product page.
Fix: Audit your feed for broken URLs — products that were deleted from your store but are still in the feed. Remove them, or update the URL to the current live page.
Limited performance due to missing data
Products are serving but have low quality scores due to thin data — short titles, missing attributes, low-resolution images.
Fix: Enrich your titles to include brand + key attributes (color, size, material). Add missing optional attributes. Upgrade images to at least 800×800px.
A Systematic Triage Process
When you open Diagnostics and see a wall of errors, here's how to approach it:
- Check for account-level issues first — If there's an account suspension, everything else is irrelevant until that's resolved
- Sort item issues by "Items affected" descending — Fix the errors affecting the most products first
- Prioritize disapprovals over warnings — Disapproved products aren't serving. Warnings are serving but at risk.
- Group errors by root cause — Often, 10 different error messages trace back to the same root issue (e.g., feed delay)
- Fix, then wait 24–48 hours — GMC re-crawls and re-evaluates products after fixes. Don't judge your progress immediately.
- Document what you fixed and when — If an issue recurs, you'll want to know what changed
For widespread issues affecting hundreds of products (like missing color on apparel), don't fix products one by one. Use feed rules to apply fixes across your catalog in bulk, then re-upload or refresh your feed.
Setting Up Ongoing Monitoring
The best time to catch a diagnostics issue is before it escalates. Set up these alerts:
- GMC email alerts — In GMC → Settings → Notifications, enable alerts for new account issues, new item disapprovals, and feed processing failures
- Weekly diagnostics review — Block 15 minutes every Monday to check your active product count and look for new issues
- Automated feed health checks — Tools like GMC Unbanned can scan your site against known GMC requirements and alert you to new compliance gaps
- Google Search Console integration — Connect GMC to Search Console for additional visibility into crawl issues affecting your product pages
The stores that never get suspended aren't lucky — they check their diagnostics regularly and fix issues before Google escalates them.
Want a faster way to catch website-level compliance gaps before they show up in Diagnostics? The GMC Unbanned free scanner checks your site against all known GMC requirements in minutes.