Product feed

A product feed is a file or data source that lists your products, one per row, with attributes such as ID, title, price and availability.

By Berend Vrakking, founder of Product Metrics. Updated 7 October 2026.

Example

Three rows of a product feed
id	title	availability	price
TR2-BLK-42	Trail Runner 2, black, size 42	in stock	€89.99
WB-BRN-44	Winter Boot, brown, size 44	in stock	€129.99
ES-WHT-M	Everyday Sock, white, medium	out of stock	€9.99

Each row is one product and each column one attribute, including the socks nobody can buy this week. Illustrative data.

For one product, and for an account

Google reads the feed row by row, and each product’s row decides where that product can show. Google says it uses this data “to match your products to the right queries”.

In Merchant Center a feed is now called a data source, and it can be a file, a Google Sheets template or an API.

Product Metrics is not a feed-management tool and does not edit your feed. It writes each product’s segment to a custom label through a supplemental feed, next to your existing product data.

Common mistake

Treating the feed as a snapshot you take once. Each row describes a product at one moment, and a row with last week’s price, stock or label describes a product that no longer exists in that form.

Questions

What is a product feed in Google Ads?

It is the product data you send to Google Merchant Center: one row per product, with attributes such as ID, title, price and availability. Google Ads campaigns for Shopping and Performance Max use that data to advertise your products.

What is an example of a product feed?

A tab-delimited text file is one example. Its first line holds the attribute names separated by tabs, and every line after it is one product with its values in the same order. A Google Sheets template or an API connection can carry the same data.

Is a product feed the same as a data source in Merchant Center?

In practice, yes. Google now calls the place where you submit product data a data source, and feed is the older word. A primary data source holds the products, and a supplemental data source adds to or overrides their details.

Sources

Keep reading

Google Merchant CenterWhere the feed is uploaded and managed.
Supplemental feedA second source that adds to or overrides the primary feed.
GTINOne of the identifiers a product row can carry.
Product SegmentationSee each product in one of six segments, by volume and return.
What is Google Merchant Center? An advertiser’s guideWhat Merchant Center does with your feed, from data sources to labels.
How to optimise Google Shopping adsSeven steps that start with the feed, then each product.