Product Reviews Diagnostics is a section of Merchant Center that offers insight into your Product Ratings data source. When you upload a data source directly into Merchant Center, the Product Reviews Diagnostics feature displays information about your reviews, including:
- If the data source was uploaded successfully.
- Errors and warnings for missing or invalid data.
- Indication if strong, unique identifiers are present in the data source.
Status of your reviews
When a data source is uploaded, the reviews in the data source will fall into one of these categories:
- Disapproved: These need to be corrected or removed. These reviews did not process successfully because of errors in the data source. Verify that the reviews are formatted appropriately and run them through an XML validation tool. Use the "Reviews" section in the Product Reviews Diagnostics feature to identify errors in the data data source and correct them.
- Needs Review: These reviews have successfully processed but may be missing values or the recommended unique identifiers. Unique identifiers make it more likely for your reviews to appear in Shopping results. Improve the quality of your data source by correcting data issues with the help of the Product Reviews Diagnostics feature. Learn about unique identifiers
- Ready to Serve: These reviews have processed successfully and contain all recommended identifiers. No action is needed from you.
Errors, warnings and notifications
The Product Reviews Diagnostics feature in Merchant Center will display issues in the data source you've uploaded. Use the "Learn More" links in the Diagnostics feature for guidance in correcting issues with the data source, then re-upload the data source. Consult the Product Reviews data source Guide for an overview on how to correctly format your data source.
Error: This refers to reviews that did not process successfully and cannot be used. Verify that the review is formatted correctly based on the Product Ratings data source specifications, and contains all recommended identifiers.
Warning: This refers to issues that may prevent a review from appearing. To improve the quality of a review, verify that the review is formatted correctly and contains all recommended identifiers.
Notification: This refers to reviews that are not eligible to show. No action is required on your part and it is recommended that you take a look at our program policies when setting up your data source.
Errors
Document is emptyThe data source does not contain any data! Refer to the data source guide for an example data source and a guide to formatting a Product Ratings data source.
There is data outside of the closing tag. Try using an XML schema validator to check your data source. More about XML schema validators can be found on our Help page.
The system was unable to extract a file from the data source. Try re-uploading your data source.
The timestamp format is incorrect. Timestamps are required to indicate when the review was written and can include date, time and timezone information, for example,
2014-04-21T11:07:07-06:00
2014-04-21T18:00:00+01:00
2014-04-21T00:00:00Z
Refer to the data source guide to see how <review_timestamp> is implemented in an example data source. You may also want to refer to a standard such as the one on this page for more information on correctly formatting timestamps.
There is a Processing Instruction in your data source that is not using the correct syntax. Please address this and run the data source through an XML validator.
There is an invalid XML character in your data source. Ensure that strings and characters in your data source are properly escaped.
There is an invalid XML start tag in your data source. Refer to the data source guide for a list of correct start tags for your Product Ratings data source.
An invalid XML value was found in the data source. Try verifying your data source with an XML schema validator, then re-upload your data source.
Review text is missing content. Reviews without associated review text are not used by Google. If this information has been left out, please add the review text to the data source. Refer to <review> in the data source guide for details on formatting this information.
The review is missing the overall rating value. Refer to <ratings> in the data source guide for details on formatting this element.
The review is missing the Review ID. A Review ID is a permanent, unique identifier for a product review and is required to uniquely identify each review. The ID won’t be shown to customers, however, you can use the ID to look up your reviews. Update your review data source to include the <review_id> attribute with a unique value for all of your reviews. Refer to our data source guide to understand how <review_id> should be implemented in the data source.
Your data source is missing a semicolon (;), which often follows entity declarations such as "$"" and "&". Verify your data source with an XML schema validator before uploading it.
The timestamp is missing. Timestamps are required to indicate when the review was written and can include date, time and timezone information, for example,
2014-04-21T11:07:07-06:00
2014-04-21T18:00:00+01:00
2014-04-21T00:00:00Z
Refer to the data source guide to see how <review_timestamp> is implemented in an example data source. Also try verifying your data source with an XML schema validator, then re-uploading your data source. More about XML schema validation can be found on our Help page.
There is a closing angle bracket '>' missing from one of the tags in your data source. Run the data source through an XML schema validator before uploading it.
The data source is missing the XML declaration, for example, '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>'. Please add this as the first line of your data source and re-upload the data source.
The data source contains a pair of opening and closing XML tags that do not match. Refer to the data source guide for a list of correct opening and closing tags for your Product Ratings data source.
The data source failed to parse and no reviews were extracted. Try verifying your data source with an XML schema validator, then re-upload your data source. More about XML schema validators can be found on our Help page.
One or more entities in the data source are referencing an entity declaration that cannot be identified. Please correct this, run the data source through an XML schema validator and re-upload it.
The collection method is unsupported. The <collection_method>, an optional field, does not match with the valid values of "unsolicited" or "post_fulfillment". Refer to the data source guide for details on what these include.
The rating value provided in the review is unsupported. It is highly likely that the provided value falls outside the inclusive range defined by the minimum and maximum values. The error message for this issue in Product Reviews Diagnostics should show you the minimum and maximum values currently in your data source, if they were included. The <ratings> element contains the element <overall> with values for "min" and "max". Be sure to refer to the data source guide for instructions on formatting this element.
The review has unsupported tags. Examples include the repetitive use of punctuation marks. Due to the persistent occurrence of the issue we were not able to successfully process this review. Please remove unnecessary symbols from the review and refer to the data source guide for an example data source.
The title of the review is unsupported and you will need to revise the <title> element with a nonEmptyStringType. Refer to the data source guide to see how <title> and other <review> elements can be added to the data source.
The top-level <feed> element should only contain the tags listed in the Product Ratings data source specifications. Verify that your data source contains the correct tags.
An XML error occurred while parsing the data source, and it is possible that none of the reviews were extracted. You will need to refer to the context of the error to find where it is in the data source file. For help with finding and addressing the specific error, please use an XML schema validator. More information on XML schema validation can be found on our Help page.
The system or URL is missing from the "XML DOCTYPE" declaration. Please address this before re-uploading your data source.
There is an incorrect closing tag in your data source. Refer to the data source guide to understand how to properly close tags in your data source.
Warnings
Comment contains URLThe review contains a URL. Do not include links to other websites in the review content. For more information on this please refer to our Program Policies.
The URL provided is an incorrect format. The elements <review_url> and <product_url> are required in the data source. The <review_url> is an extension of the httpUrlType and contains the link to the landing page of the review. The <product_url> is the URL of the product and may have the same value as the <review_url> element if the review URL and the product URL are the same. For details on how to format these elements, look at <review_url> and <product_url> in the data source guide.
Google matches reviews to products based on globally unique product identifiers. Recommended global identifiers for review matching are GTINs The product id is missing. More information about unique identifiers may be found in our Help Center. At least one of the recommended identifiers should be added to the product data in each review for optimal review matching. Instructions for adding GTIN can be found in our data source guide. If it is impossible to provide these globally unique product identifiers, Google will attempt to match a review based on other metadata information such as SKU and product URLs; however, the matching issue may persist.
The review is missing the <product_ids> element, which is essential for matching reviews to products. See our data source guide for details on elements that can be used with <product_ids>. The most valuable product ID is a unique identifier such as GTIN. More information about unique identifiers may be found in our Help Center.
The <product_id> type is missing. See the sample data source in our data source guide to understand how this element should be implemented in the data source.
The <product_url> is missing. See the sample data source in our data source guide to understand how this element should be implemented in the data source.
The reviewer name is missing. The <name> element is an extension of the nonEmptyStringType and contains the name or alias of the reviewer. If the reviewer is anonymous, you can indicate this with the "is_anonymous" attribute. Guidance on formatting the <reviewer> <name> element can be found in our data source guide.
The <review_url>is missing. See the sample data source in our data source guide to understand how this element should be implemented in the data source.
The language used in the data source is unknown. Refer to this page for the languages supported in Merchant Center.
This review has unnecessary tags. Examples include the repetitive use of punctuation marks. Please remove unnecessary tags from the review and refer to the data source guide for an example data source.
The review has unsupported comment characters (" "). Replacement characters are used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character. Please remove the replacement characters from the review and refer to the data source guide for an example data source.
The <product_id> type is unsupported. Some of the values that can be implemented for this tag include unique identifiers such as GTIN. See our data source guide for details. More information about unique identifiers may be found in our Help Center.
It appears there is an unsupported reviewer name. Unsupported name values include full names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information.
- If your data contains full names or other personal information use pseudonyms or shorten the name. For example: shorten Jane Smith to Jane S.
- If you’re unable to remove personal information, use the
is_anonymousattribute. For example:<name is_anonymous="true">Anonymous</name>.
| Not allowed | Examples | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Full names | Jane Smith | Jane S., Jane, JS, |
| Email addresses | jane.smith@example.com | Mark as anonymous |
| Handles that contain full names or other personal information | janesmithshopper | Mark as anonymous |
The review URL type provided in the data source is unsupported. The value for <review_url> must be either "singleton" or "group". Refer to the data source guide for details on what these refer to.
Notifications
Low-quality reviewA quality analysis of the review has indicated that it does not meet the quality threshold for being displayed and is of low quality.
The review has been marked as spam using the <is_spam> attribute and will not be displayed. Visit the data source guide to learn more about the <is_spam> attribute.