Clothing and shoes need more product data than most categories in Google Merchant Center. When some of it is absent, you see "Missing value: size [size], color [color], gender [gender], age group [age_group]". This guide covers which attributes Google requires, the values it accepts, and how to fix the issue.
What the issue means
Google's help page says a value is not provided for a required product attribute, and that you must specify these attributes for your offers to show. The issue can cover one missing attribute or several.
| Product | Attributes the help page requires |
|---|---|
| Apparel | gender, age group, color |
| Shoes | gender, age group, color, size |
Where each attribute is required
Google's product data specification sets the scope. Color, gender and age group are required for apparel products sold to Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, the UK or the US, and for free listings in the Apparel & Accessories category. Size is required for the Clothing and Shoes categories in those same countries.
- Color: Also required for any product available in multiple colors
- Size: Also required for any product available in multiple sizes
- Gender: Also required for gender-specific products
- Age group: Also required for any product with an assigned age group
The values Google accepts
Gender and age group take fixed values. Color and size are free text with rules.
| Attribute | Accepted values |
|---|---|
| gender | male, female, unisex |
| age_group | newborn, infant, toddler, kids, adult |
| color | A color name, up to 100 characters, with multiple colors separated by a slash and the primary color first |
| size | Up to 100 characters, with multiple dimensions combined into one value |
Google does not accept numbers, hex codes or values such as "multicolor" or "N/A" for color. For one-size items it accepts values such as one_size, OS and OSFA. Adult covers teens and older.
Check the product category
One cause has nothing to do with the attributes themselves. Google's help page notes that if you do not provide a Google product category, one may be assigned automatically. If the assigned category is wrong, the product can be held to apparel requirements that do not fit it, and setting the correct category yourself may resolve the issue.
Fix the products
Google gives two routes. For a single product, select Products & store, then Products, open the Needs attention tab, filter to the affected products, select the product title, choose Edit, enter the missing values and select Save. For many products, download the list as a .csv file, add the missing values to your product data at the source and upload it again.
- ✅ The same color name on the page and in the product data
- ✅ Variants that share an item group ID and differ by size or color
- ❌ Size or color that exists only in a photo or a size chart
Google says it may take some time for changes to show on the Needs attention page.
For the title side of apparel listings, see how to write Google Shopping titles.
Doing this at scale
FeedFix checks every product against Google Merchant Center and Meta Catalog rules and scores each one from 0 to 100 per channel, so you can see which products fall short. It drafts compliant title and description rewrites that you review as before/after diffs and apply in bulk, and every change is audit-logged. See FeedFix.