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April 6, 2026

# How to Use Merchant Feed Validator the Right Way (2026)

Getting product feed validation right isn't complicated, but it does have a correct order of operations — skip a step and the rest of the work doesn't hold up as well.

Start here:
1. Validate after every feed regeneration, not just the first submission — schema drift creeps in silently as your product catalog or CMS changes.
2. Check character limits per field (150 for title, 5000 for description) — feeds that pass locally can still get truncated or rejected if a plugin adds unexpected length.
3. Confirm GTIN/MPN formatting matches the required pattern for your product category — malformed identifiers are a very common, easy-to-miss rejection reason.
4. Validate currency and price formatting per target country if you're running multi-region feeds — a comma-vs-period decimal mismatch alone can invalidate every row.

Once that's in place, the real value comes from doing it consistently rather than once. Merchant Feed Validator is one of those tasks that pays off more from a regular check-in than from a single perfect pass.

A mistake worth calling out specifically: Validating a sample of products instead of the full feed, missing category-specific errors that only affect a subset of your catalog. This is common enough that it's worth a deliberate check, not just an assumption that it isn't happening.

This pairs naturally with Competitor Product Research Tool best practices — the two are frequently part of the same technical SEO pass, and fixing one without the other leaves an easy win on the table.

Merchant Feed Validator does the mechanical part of this for you — the judgment calls above still matter, but the setup and checking becomes a couple of minutes' work instead of a spreadsheet.

Try Merchant Feed Validator yourself

Everything in this guide runs directly in your browser — no signup, no install.

Open Merchant Feed Validator →
More on product feed validation
The Product Feed Validation Checklist: What to Verify Before You Publish
A short, practical checklist for product feed validation — the things worth checking every time, not just the first time.
Merchant Feed Validator vs. Doing It by Hand: Is It Worth Switching?
A practical look at what Merchant Feed Validator actually saves you over doing product feed validation manually, and when manual still makes sense.
Product Feed Validation FAQ: Questions People Actually Ask
Straight answers to the questions that come up most often about product feed validation.
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