The new Listing Feed status card on the "Overview" page provides a status on your XML listing feed. On this card, you can find when your feed was last fetched, whether your feed is currently blocked, and how to unblock your feed in certain scenarios.
On this page
- Listing feed fetching and approval process
- Meaning of “Latest fetch”, “Status” and “Last approved” terminology
- Possible reasons your feed could be blocked
- How to unblock your feed
Listing feed fetching and approval process
Listing feeds are fetched on a daily basis. Each time a listing is fetched, Google analyzes the changes in the feed. If there aren't any large or potentially negative changes, Google will automatically approve your feed and continue the data ingestion process. However, if there are any large and potentially negative changes, Google will “block” the feed for further evaluation, which prevents the changes from going live. This helps you and also the end user by ensuring that any data errors don't go live.
The Listing Feed status card shows the the current state of the feed: "approved", "blocked", or "awaiting processing".
Meaning of “Latest fetch”, “Status”, and “Last approved” terminology
The Listing Feed status card displays the following fields:
- Latest fetch provides the time stamp of the last successfully feed fetch.
- Status indicates whether your feed is "blocked", "approved", or "awaiting processing".
- Last approved indicates the last time your feed was approved.
Possible reasons your feed could be blocked
Below are the possible issue types that could cause your feed to be blocked. Follow the instructions on the Listing Feed status card for guidance on how to handle the blocking reason.
| Reason | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Listings added | Google detected a large number of listings added in the latest feed. The feed will be blocked in this situation to ensure that the change was intentional. |
| Listings removed | Google detected a large number of listings removed in the latest feed. The feed will be blocked in this situation to ensure that the change was intentional. |
| XML file error | Google detected XML error(s) in the latest feed. Google will continue to block the feed until these errors are fixed. |
| Zip file error | Google was unable to unzip the latest XML feed. Google will continue to block the feed until the zip file error is resolved. |
| Other | Google detected another large change in your metadata and is reviewing internally for data quality assurance. |
How to unblock your feed
You can choose to approve or abandon the data feed from the Listing Feed status card. The unblocking process varies slightly based on the reason for the block.
- To approve the changes, click "Yes", and the current blocked feed will be processed and will go live.
- To reject the changes, click "No", and Google will discard the current blocked feed. Google will then fetch your feed at the next scheduled time. Ensure that the issues are fixed in your XML feed before the next scheduled fetch, else your feed will become blocked again.