How to Fix Feed Fetch Errors in Google Merchant Center
Why GMC can't fetch your product feed and how to resolve 404, 403, timeout, and encoding errors.
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What Is a Feed Fetch Error?
A feed fetch error means Google's crawler attempted to download your product feed file and failed. Products don't immediately disappear — GMC retries for several days. But if the feed can't be fetched for more than a few days, products go out of stock in Shopping.
404 Not Found
The feed URL no longer exists. Common cause: URL changed after a platform update.
Fix: Update the feed URL in GMC under Products > Feeds > [your feed] > Edit. Test the URL in a browser to confirm it returns the file.
403 Forbidden
The server is blocking Google's crawler. Common causes: IP whitelist blocking Googlebot, password-protected feed URL.
Fix: If the feed is password-protected, add credentials in GMC's feed settings under Basic HTTP Authentication.
Connection Timeout
Google's crawler couldn't connect in time. Common cause: dynamically generated feed taking too long for large catalogs.
Fix: Pre-generate the feed as a static file. Large feeds (100k+ products) should be served as a pre-built file, not generated on-the-fly.
Encoding Errors
Feed file contains characters Google can't parse. Common causes: non-UTF-8 encoding, special characters not escaped in XML.
Fix: Save the feed as UTF-8. In XML feeds, ampersands must be escaped as & and less-than as <
Re-fetching After a Fix
After fixing, go to Products > Feeds > [your feed] and click Fetch now to trigger an immediate fetch.