How To Fix Limited Performance Due To Missing Value [gtin] In Google Merchant Center

How To Fix Limited Performance Due To Missing Value [gtin] In Google Merchant Center

A step-by-step written guide using feed rules is explained further in this article. Reading all the other info is recommended to ensure you know what to do.

General Recommendation

When submitting product identifiers, the following should be applied.
If a manufacturer has assigned a bar code, then submit brand, mpn (if available), GTIN, and set identifier exists to yes.
If the manufacturer has not assigned a bar code, remove the values brand, mpn, gtin, and set identifier to no.
One more option can be done, and that is to add the brand + MPN; this sometimes works, which means, in this case, you do not need to remove all product identifiers. So, testing is recommended.

Googles Rule

While the official documentation does mention that you can submit brand + mpn and ignore GTIN, in most cases, this will cause issues and generate warnings, such as limited performance due to missing identifiers. This applied to warnings before June 2021.
As of June 2021, if the manufacturer has not assigned bar codes and your brand, gtin, and mpn values are removed, you will still get the “limited performance” warning. This is because Google now adds another check depending on which categories your products belong to.
This means that you may still get flagged regardless of adding accurate data.

However, if everyone selling the same product is in the same boat as you are, technically, you are staying caught up. Nobody with that specific product will have barcodes so that the performance will be the same among competitors.

What You Can Not Do!

Bar codes

Only submit GS1 barcodes, any other barcodes you generate are not allowed and will get your products disapproved.

MPN

The most common misconception is that most merchants use SKU as the MPN values, which needs to be corrected.

SKU stands for “stock keeping unit” and — as the name suggests — it is a number (usually eight alphanumeric digits) that retailers assign to products to keep track of stock levels internally.

An MPN, or manufacturer part number, is a manufacturer-assigned, unique, alphanumeric value used to identify a product from the same manufacturer.

How To Find The Bar Codes?

Check the product packaging or contact the manufacturer.
A secondary reason for the issue is that most merchants use SKU as the MPN values, which needs to be corrected.

Why Is Google Doing This?

Most likely to reduce scammers on Google Shopping.

What If I Can’t Do Any of The Above?

Great question. In this case, you will have to accept the limited performance. Consider registering your products with GS1 bar codes if you are the manufacturer.

Remove All Values & Set Identifier Exist to No

If you want to easily remove all values.

You can use feed rules in Google Merchant Center to remove the values Brand, MPN and GTIN (assuming GTIN has wrong values) then set Identifier Exists to the value of No.

Google Merchant Center Classic

  1. Log in to Google Merchant Center
  2. Click on Products
  3. Click on Feeds
  4. Click on your feed
Google Merchant Center Feeds
  1. Select the Feed rules tab
  2. Click on the blue plus icon
  3. Type gtin, and now select the processed attribute gtin
Google Merchant Center Add GTIN Rules
  1. Change the data source, and instead add a modification
Cancel Data Source in Google Merchant Center
  1. Now slect your condition by clicking on type or select, and begin typing gtin. And select gtin.
  2. Change contains to does not match regular expression
  3. With the value: ^\d{12,14}$
  4. Choose clear as your action to perform
  5. And click ok
  6. Now save as draft.
Google Merchant Center Add Modification GTIN
  1. Create another rule for mpn
  2. Again create a modifcation instead of a data source
  3. Now set if gtin (make sure to select GTIN located under processed attributes) has no value
  4. Choose the Clear operation, click on OK and save as draft
Google Merchant Center Add MPN Modification
Google Merchant Center Add MPN Modification Example
  1. Repeat the same steps you did for MPN as for the Brand attribute
  2. Now create another rule for product identifiers
  3. We now want to add a modification with the following rule
  4. If GTIN (processed attribute) has no value
  5. Set to no
Google Merchant Center Add Product Identifier Rules
  1. You can now apply the feed rules you just created
Save Feed Rules In Google Merchant Center

In some cases the feed rules will not apply immediately, and you may want to reprocess the feed.

More info:

Need Help?
Do you have a question or need specialist support? Get in touch!

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
19 Comments
Newest
Oldest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Paul
5 months ago

Some of our most popular “products” on the site are groupsets, which is essentially a collection of bike parts, like a cassette, chain, derailleur and shifter for example. While each of those parts separately would have a UPC the geoupset or bundle does not. As such all of our groupsets have the “Limited performance due to missing value [gtin]” warning.

Is it possible to do anything about it?

Paul
Reply to  Emmanuel Flossie
5 months ago

To your knowledge, is there anyway to do this from within Shopify?

Paul
Reply to  Emmanuel Flossie
5 months ago

Is that something you’d be able to help with? I’m using the code provided in your “Adding Structured Data to Shopify for Google Merchant & Facebook” article but it doesn’t look like there is any code to set the is_bundle attribute to yes in that code.

Paul
Reply to  Emmanuel Flossie
5 months ago

Yes, I realize that but my question is, what can I do in Shopify for te date feed to send this attribute and make sure it’s set to yes for the appropriate products?

Paul
Reply to  Emmanuel Flossie
5 months ago

I created a feed rule that would set is_bundle to Yes for the groupsets, but when I test the rule the results show that it showed “No existing issues will be resolved”

Paul
Reply to  Emmanuel Flossie
5 months ago

One last question. You mentioned to use the barcode of the main item in that bundle, but all of our bundles have variants. For example a bundle contains a derailleur, shifter, cassette, chain and a crankset. The crankset may come in different lengths and so the bundle will have a number of variants. The bundle can be purchased in any combination of the parts so if we pick one of the parts UPC code as the “main” item there will be bundles with the same UPC code which will cause an error as well.

Any suggestions how to get around this?

Alex
Alex
11 months ago

Hello Expert,
I note the following description in your post:

What If I Can’t Do Any of The Above?Great question. In this case, you will have to accept the limited performance. If you are the manufacturer, consider registering your products with GS1 bar codes.

If we do accept the limited performance, is there a risk of GMC suspended?

Great thanks.

Alex
Alex
Reply to  Emmanuel Flossie
10 months ago

Thanks for reply. We assigned MPN number same with SKU, so it will be suspended? Looking forward to your clarify.

Gary Bichell
1 year ago

Google suggest adding GTIN so I add the UPC, product goes away as if I fixed it. Next day the same products with the same fix suggestions. Does this process take a few days or something? When they suggest the same products it has the barcodes wiped out

Marcos Vinicius
Marcos Vinicius
2 years ago

Hi.

How are you GOOGLE ADS SPECIALIST?

About SMART GOOGLE SHOPPING…

A FEED of 18,000 products over 6 months advertising, only a few actually go out of sales…

Let’s say about 100 products on average, THAT REALLY GET SALES, and have clicks!

Daily Spend does not consume the entire budget.

Google MERCHANT CENTER is OK.

All 18,000 products are in the same FEED and ad group, configured for ROAS.

What would be the advanced structure for SMART GOOGLE SHOPPING, to scale the other products that are not leaving sales or clicks?

Another question:
Is the standard search that appears only text, putting manual CPC, those used in the past, buying SPECIFIC keywords, is it still viable?

*I’m from Brazil, sorry for the writing errors! I am using a translator 🙂

19
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x