Product Feed Preflight Checklist for Ecommerce Agencies

When a client sends a CSV or TSV catalog, the safest workflow is not “fix everything automatically.” Separate deterministic formatting cleanup from merchant facts, keep evidence, then validate the result again before handoff.

Independent technical checklist. Platform specifications can change. Verify current official documentation before production submission.

1. Preserve the original

• Keep the client's original catalog unchanged.
• Work on a copy and retain a per-change log.
• Do not manufacture missing price, stock, brand, seller identity or product identifiers.

2. Identify the target feed profile

Do not assume OpenAI Stable and Google-compatible product feeds are interchangeable. Field names, seller identity handling and availability values can differ. For example, an OpenAI unknown availability value should not be silently converted into a false in-stock or out-of-stock claim.

Compare OpenAI Stable and Google-compatible feed differences →

OpenAI Stable product-feed validation guide →

3. Validate required catalog data

• Required fields are present and non-empty for the selected profile.
• Product and image URLs are absolute and usable.
• Prices use the expected amount/currency representation.
• Availability values belong to the target profile's accepted set.
• Duplicate product IDs are identified.
• Conditional identifiers and brand requirements are reviewed rather than guessed.

4. Check the public product page

• Final URL and redirects behave as expected.
• Canonical and indexing directives do not contradict the intended page.
• robots.txt and sitemap discovery are checked.
• Product structured data is inspected where relevant.
• Price and availability should agree with the merchant's actual landing/checkout experience.

5. Apply only safe automatic fixes

Formatting normalization such as surrounding whitespace can be deterministic. Missing business facts are not. Every automatic edit should be attributable to a rule and recorded with before/after evidence.

6. Recheck the fixed copy

Run the target-profile validation again. The handoff should distinguish resolved formatting defects from unresolved merchant-input requirements.

7. Build a client handoff bundle

• Before-audit result
• Safe fixed catalog copy
• Per-change changelog
• After-fix recheck
• Source-aware evidence
• Optional public-page evidence
• Compact summary for the client

The toolkit does not submit feeds or guarantee platform acceptance, indexing, recommendation, ranking, checkout eligibility, traffic or sales. Google checks are a basic preflight, not exhaustive Merchant Center certification.