Google Shopping feed from PrestaShop: which products to exclude before a campaign

Sending your whole catalog to Google Shopping sounds like the way to get the most reach. In practice, every weak product in the feed costs you twice: Merchant Center rejects or limits it, and the products that do get shown compete with listings that have better data. Before you start or scale a campaign, decide which products should not be in the feed. Here is a checklist for PrestaShop shops.

Why less can be more

• Disapprovals spread. Repeated mismatches in price or availability can lead to warnings for the whole account, not just one item.
• Budget follows clicks, not quality. Performance Max spends money on whatever gets clicked, including a product with one blurry photo that never converts.
• Data drives ranking. Google matches search queries to titles, descriptions, brands and GTINs. Products with thin data are shown less often and for worse queries.

The checklist: what to exclude (or fix first)

Quick SQL check

These queries list the most common blockers. Replace the ps_ prefix and the id_lang/id_shop values if yours differ.

-- out-of-stock products and combinations
SELECT p.id_product, pl.name, sa.id_product_attribute, sa.quantity
FROM ps_stock_available sa
JOIN ps_product p ON p.id_product = sa.id_product
JOIN ps_product_lang pl
  ON pl.id_product = p.id_product AND pl.id_lang = 1 AND pl.id_shop = 1
WHERE p.active = 1 AND sa.quantity <= 0
  AND (sa.id_product_attribute > 0
       OR NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM ps_product_attribute pa WHERE pa.id_product = p.id_product));

-- price 0
SELECT id_product, price FROM ps_product_shop
WHERE id_shop = 1 AND active = 1 AND price <= 0;

-- combinations without EAN
SELECT pa.id_product, pa.id_product_attribute, pa.reference
FROM ps_product_attribute pa
JOIN ps_product p ON p.id_product = pa.id_product
WHERE p.active = 1 AND COALESCE(pa.ean13, '') = '';

-- products without a brand
SELECT id_product, reference FROM ps_product
WHERE active = 1 AND id_manufacturer = 0;

More queries (images, descriptions, combination images, weight): How to find PrestaShop products with missing images, descriptions or EAN.

Fix or exclude?

Not every gap is a reason to drop a product. A simple rule:

• Exclude now: out of stock, price 0, no image. These cannot sell or will be rejected anyway.
• Fix within days: missing GTIN on products that have a barcode, missing brand, missing colour/size on apparel.
• Improve over time: short descriptions, fewer images than you would like, weak titles.

Most PrestaShop feed modules let you exclude products by ID, category or stock. Excluding by data quality is harder, because quality is not stored anywhere in PrestaShop – it has to be calculated first.

Keep the feed clean automatically

A one-off clean-up helps for a few weeks. Then new products and imports bring the same problems back. The lasting fix is a quality gate: products are scored regularly, and only those above a threshold go into the feed. When someone fixes a product, it returns to the feed on the next scan without anyone editing exclusion lists.

Sources

• Google Merchant Center Help – Product data specification
• Google Merchant Center Help – Missing or incorrect GTIN