Fix “Missing value [color]”, [size], [gender] and [age_group] for apparel in Merchant Center

Merchant Center disapproves apparel products with “Missing value [color]”, “[size]”, “[gender]” or “[age_group]” because those four attributes are required for the Apparel & Accessories category in free listings and in Shopping ads for Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. Map your variant options to color and size, and set gender and age_group per product; a fashion catalogue that fails in bulk almost always fails here.

What Merchant Center means by “Missing value [color] / [size] / [gender] / [age_group]”

Four attributes are required for products in Google’s Apparel & Accessories category: color, size, gender and age_group. Google’s page on data quality disapprovals lists a “Missing value” issue for each, and the attribute pages (color, size, gender, age_group) state where they are required: all apparel in free listings, and apparel in Shopping ads for Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. A missing one disapproves the item there.

The category is decided by Google, not by you: a product Google classifies as apparel owes the four attributes even if your feed calls it something else. That is why a fashion catalogue that worked in one market can fail in bulk on entering another.

Why it happens

• Options not mapped to attributes. The store has a Colour option and a Size option, but the export does not write them as color and size.
• Gender and age group never recorded. Most platforms have no field for them; the export has nothing to send.
• Option names in another language (“Culoare”, “Farbe”, “Talla”) that the export’s mapping does not recognise.
• Colour written as a code (#1a1a1a, BLK) or as a non-colour (“Assorted”, “Variety”), which Google rejects as invalid, a separate issue.
• Accessories forgotten. Bags, footwear, jewellery and watches are Apparel & Accessories too.

How to fix it

In Shopify

Name the options Color (or Colour) and Size so feeds can map them; Shopify’s channel and our integration read options by name and send them as color and size per variant. Shopify has no gender or age-group field: use the Google & YouTube channel’s product fields, or metafields mapped in your feed tool, and set them per product (male / female / unisex; newborn / infant / toddler / kids / adult).

In WooCommerce

Use global attributes named Colour and Size for variations, so every variation carries a value. For gender and age group, add two product attributes (not used for variations) with Google’s accepted values, and map them in your feed tool. Our free connector sends colour and size from attributes named for them, such as Colour, Couleur or Farbe and Size, Taille or US Size (the lists are on the color and size attribute pages): a variation’s own, else the product’s when it holds one value. It does not send gender or age group, because WooCommerce has no field for them and a guessed value is worse than none; add them per product through a supplemental data source in Merchant Center, or through your feed tool’s mapping.

In a CSV or XML feed

Add the four columns. color: the colour name as shown on the page, up to three colours separated by /, no hex codes. size: the size as shown on the page, one value per variant. gender: male, female or unisex. age_group: newborn, infant, toddler, kids or adult. Fill them for every row Google puts in Apparel & Accessories, which the Needs attention filter will show you.

How long until Merchant Center clears it

Rows with all four attributes are re-approved on the next fetch, within 24–72 hours. Rows that gain the attributes also start grouping properly with item_group_id, since colour and size are how Google distinguishes variants inside a group.

What FeedRobin does about it

The free check raises this only when the feed as a whole looks like clothing (at least a quarter of rows have apparel words in their type, category or title), and then counts the rows with apparel words that have no size or no colour. It is reported and not scored. For connected stores, colour and size are mapped from variant options on connect where the store holds them; where nobody recorded them, nobody can, and the dashboard says which products those are.

Sources

• Fixing Merchant Center disapprovals for product data quality violations — Google Merchant Center Help
• Color [color] — Google Merchant Center Help
• Size [size] — Google Merchant Center Help
• Gender [gender] — Google Merchant Center Help
• Age group [age_group] — Google Merchant Center Help