Why manual feed validator fails on real files

Google Merchant Center rejects the whole file and says "invalid value" without telling you which row. With 4,000 products, finding that row by hand is an afternoon.

You see this most often in Google Shopping feeds, Meta catalogues, any bulk product upload. The platform error report is aggregated: one message for the file, not one per line.

What actually goes wrong

Manual handling fails in a specific way: it does not produce obviously broken output, it produces output that is almost right. The platform error report is aggregated: one message for the file, not one per line. The mistake survives review because nothing looks wrong until an importer rejects the file or a report is quietly incorrect.

A cheaper habit

Check the file before it leaves your machine. That is the entire purpose of Feed Validator — it reads the data you paste, applies the same rules an importer would, and shows the row that will break, rather than a summary of how many rows broke.

Checking before upload is the difference between one fixed file and one rejected file plus four days of re-approval.

For the full picture — imports, feeds, variants, identifiers — see the pillar guide: Shopify product data management.

Try it on your own file

Open Feed Validator and paste a sample. It is free, it does not store anything, and you do not need an account. If the file is sensitive, save the page locally and run it offline.

Questions people ask

Which columns are required?

Six for Google (id, title, link, image_link, price, availability) and eight for Meta.

Does it check prices?

Yes — non-numeric prices, currency symbols and Meta’s missing currency code are all flagged.