Help and setup
Setup is three steps and does not involve a Google login. If you get stuck at any of them, the answer is usually in the section below it.
1. Install and activate
Install the plugin and activate it. WooCommerce must be active first. The free edition is on WordPress.org; a paid licence is entered under Merchant Feed → Settings → Licence.
2. Generate your first feed
Go to Merchant Feed and generate. The run reports how many items were written, how many were excluded and why, and where each derived attribute came from.
Nothing is ever dropped without a reason. If a product is missing from the feed, it is in the exclusion list with the reason next to it.
3. Add the feed URL to Merchant Center
Copy the feed URL from the dashboard. In Merchant Center, go to Products → Data sources → Add product source → Scheduled fetch, paste the URL, and pick a fetch frequency that matches your regeneration schedule.
Set the plugin's schedule first, and let Merchant Center fetch slightly after it. Fetching more often than you regenerate just re-reads the same file.
Common questions
Which feed format should I use?
XML unless you have a reason to prefer otherwise. All three carry the same data. TSV and CSV are easier to open in a spreadsheet when you want to eyeball a column.
My apparel products are missing gender or age group
Google requires both on apparel and WooCommerce stores neither. The plugin reads them from the variation attribute, then the category, then the title. Where there is no signal it leaves the attribute out rather than guessing, because a wrong value misrepresents the product and a missing one is only a warning.
Set them explicitly per product in the Google Feed tab on the product editor, or set a catalogue default under Settings → Feed.
google_product_category is empty
Map your categories with wp qweb-feed map-categories, which proposes a Google category for each WooCommerce category with a confidence next to it. Accept the ones you agree with, then set a fallback for everything else with --default.
Do not accept the proposals unread. On a real catalogue the plugin will suggest a category for names like "Mixed" or "Clearance" that is confidently wrong, which is exactly why it refuses to apply them for you.
My titles are in capitals
ALL CAPS titles violate Merchant Center policy. Turn on Settings → Feed → Title case and the plugin recases them in the feed only, leaving your products untouched. Size codes, style numbers and abbreviations such as 2XL, STYLE# 102M and 5 PKT are preserved.
The feed did not regenerate on schedule
WordPress cron only fires when someone visits the site. On a quiet store, use a real cron job calling wp qweb-feed generate instead, and set the plugin's schedule to manual.
Do I have to connect a Google account?
No, and the default workflow never asks. Connecting Google is optional and only adds account-aware features such as reading back the issues Merchant Center itself reports.
The same barcode is on every pack size
Each buyable size needs its own GTIN. Audit flags this. Apply will not invent a barcode. Enter the real one on each variation, or leave extras blank.
Google category Apply wrote nothing
The matcher only writes when it is certain, or when you set a default in Settings (525 for vitamins, 187 for shoes). A rule is the other path. A guessed category is worse than an empty one.
This is a health or supplement product
AI rewrites are feed overrides only. Shop titles stay as they are. Read the override before any live fetch. Feed-only copy does not clear a healthcare disapproval on the landing page.
Google marked the item as adult
If the product is not adult content, Apply adult=no or set the Settings fallback. That does not change the shop page.
Still stuck?
If none of this covers it, open a ticket from your account page and include the output of wp qweb-feed doctor. It reports the plugin version, the WooCommerce version, the feed path, its writability and the last run's result, which is most of what we would ask for.