Short answer. Merchant Center disapproves a product with “Missing value [shipping]” when it has no shipping cost for the target country, neither from the account’s shipping settings nor from the feed’s shipping attribute. Set up a shipping policy under Shipping and returns for the country, or add the shipping attribute per product; the account setting is the simpler fix and covers the whole catalogue.
| Shown in Merchant Center as | Missing value [shipping] |
|---|---|
| Attribute | shipping |
| Effect | Product disapproved |
| Where to find it | Products → Needs attention, then filter by this issue |
| Free check | Not something a feed file shows; see below for what the check can tell you instead |
What Merchant Center means by “Missing value [shipping]”
Google shows a shipping cost with every Shopping listing, so it has to know one for each product in each country you target. The shipping specification makes the attribute required where no account-level shipping policy covers the product; when neither the account nor the feed supplies a cost, the Content API’s product issues list reports missing_shipping, “Missing value [shipping]”, with the fix “add shipping costs for your product”. The product is disapproved.
The same gap at account scale is the account-level issue “Missing shipping costs”, whose help page gives the settings path. Fixing the account setting clears both.
Why it happens
- No shipping policy for the country. The account was set up for one market and the feed now targets another.
- A policy that excludes the product: it applies to a shipping label or a price range the product does not fall in.
- Free shipping assumed to need no setting. An absent cost is not zero; zero has to be stated.
- Feed-level shipping written in the wrong shape (country and price in separate columns, or a currency mismatch), so Google reads none.
How to fix it
In Shopify
Shopify’s Google & YouTube channel can sync your Shopify shipping rates into Merchant Center; check that the sync is on and covers the target country. Otherwise set a policy in Merchant Center under Shipping and returns, matching what checkout charges.
In WooCommerce
Our free plugin does not write per-product shipping, on purpose: WooCommerce shipping zones are rules, not a single number per product, and a wrong number in the feed is worse than the account setting. Create the shipping policy in Merchant Center for each country, mirroring your zones and any free-shipping threshold.
In a CSV or XML feed
Prefer the account setting: Shipping and returns → Shipping policies → Add shipping policy, one per target country, as Google’s help page describes. Use the feed’s shipping attribute only for exceptions, written as Google specifies (country, optional region and service, then the price with currency), and know that it overrides the account policy for that product.
How long until Merchant Center clears it
Google’s help page says changes take 24–72 hours to reflect. No feed re-fetch is needed for an account-level policy, though it does no harm.
What FeedRobin does about it
Shipping is set in Merchant Center, not in the file, for almost every store, so the free feed check does not report on it and this page says so plainly. In the feeds we serve, we pass through a shipping attribute when your source provides one and never invent a cost.
Questions merchants ask
Should I set shipping in the account or in the feed?
In the account, for almost every store: one policy covers every product and changes in one place. The feed attribute is for exceptions, heavy items, or per-product rates, and it overrides the account setting for that product.
I offer free shipping. Do I still need to set it?
Yes, as a policy with a cost of 0. An absent value is not free shipping; it is missing information, and the product is disapproved until it is there.
I sell to several countries. Do I need shipping for each?
For each country the feed targets, yes. A feed for Germany needs a German shipping policy; a policy for the United Kingdom does not cover it.
Sources
- Shipping [shipping] — Google Merchant Center Help
- How to fix: Missing shipping costs — Google Merchant Center Help
- Product issues (Content API for Shopping): the issue codes and the titles Merchant Center shows — Google Merchant Center Help