Google feed URL where to find it and test it works

The scheduled fetch in Merchant Center is a black box. If the URL is wrong, or your server sends the wrong content type, you get a vague error hours later. Three checks catch every issue we have seen.

Where the feed URL lives in AiFeedOptimiser

Open the dashboard, click your store, look for the Google Merchant feed card. The URL follows the pattern https://aifeedoptimiser.co.uk/feeds/{storeId}/google-merchant.xml. It is public by design, Google needs to fetch it without a login. The same store also exposes Meta Catalogue, Bing and TikTok feed URLs from the same card.

Test 1 open it in a browser

Paste the URL into Chrome. You should see well-formed XML starting with <?xml version="1.0"?> and a <rss> or <feed> root. If you see JSON, an error page, or a redirect to your dashboard, the URL is wrong. If you see the XML but the browser tries to download it, that is fine, Google fetches it either way.

Test 2 check the item count

Use view-source or curl to count the <item> tags. It should match the number of products you expect to submit, minus any excluded by the feed rules and filters you set (out of stock, draft, specific tags).

curl -s https://aifeedoptimiser.co.uk/feeds/YOUR_STORE_ID/google-merchant.xml | grep -c '<item>'

Test 3 validate with the Merchant Center Diagnostics tool

In Merchant Center Next, Data sources, click Add data source, Scheduled fetch, paste the URL and hit Fetch now with the Test only option. Google runs the same fetch it would run tomorrow and shows you the parse errors up front. No product goes live yet.

If the fetch fails

• Timeout, your feed took longer than 3 hours to generate, use snapshot caching so the URL serves in seconds
• Unsupported content type, the server sent text/html instead of application/xml, check your reverse proxy
• Empty feed, filters removed every product, loosen them or check inventory sync
• Access denied, the URL requires auth by mistake, AiFeedOptimiser feed URLs are always public