Guide

Merchant Center Text Too Long: Title and Description Errors

Fix Google Merchant Center's text too long, missing product title, missing description and description too short issues, with Google's length limits.

Shown in Merchant Center as Text too long Missing product title Missing product description Description text too short

Last verified · 4 min read

Google Merchant Center reports Text too long when a product's title or description exceeds the maximum character count and is being truncated: titles can be up to 150 characters and descriptions up to 5,000 (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Text too long). Three related issues cover the opposite problem: Missing product title, Missing product description and Description text too short. All four are fixed in your product data, ideally where the feed is generated, so the next upload doesn't bring them back.

Google's title and description limits

As of October 2026, Google's limits and recommendations are (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Text too long):

Attribute Maximum Google recommends
title 150 characters 70 or fewer; Shopping ads and free listings show up to 70 characters
description 5,000 characters About 500–1,000 characters, with key details in the first 160–500

Google also asks you to put distinctive product attributes at the start of the title, because truncation can hide the rest, and to write descriptions with standard grammar that end with punctuation (same source).

Missing product title

Missing product title means one or more products have no title (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Missing product title). Google's title guidance on that page:

  • Use a relevant title that clearly describes the product.
  • Give each product variant its own title.
  • Avoid foreign-language words unless they are widely understood.
  • Make sure your data source includes a title for every individual product.

A title is required for every product, through either title or structured_title (Google Merchant Center Help, Product data specification).

Missing or too short description

Missing product description means the description attribute was left out when the product was added (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Missing product description). Description text too short means the description is too short to meet Google's minimum; Google doesn't publish an exact minimum, and recommends about 500–1,000 characters (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Description text too short).

Google suggests including relevant details such as size, material, intended age range, special features and technical specifications, plus visual traits like shape, pattern, texture and design, and only information that is relevant to the product (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Missing product description).

How to fix title and description issues

The steps are the same for all four issues (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Text too long):

  1. A few products: in Merchant Center, open Products > Needs attention, filter to the affected products, select Edit product, correct the title or description and save.
  2. Many products: download the .csv list of affected products, update the titles and descriptions in your product data, and upload it again.

For missing titles and descriptions, Google says changes may take 24–72 hours to appear on the Needs attention page (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Missing product title).

Fix titles at scale

Store exports often produce titles that are too long (variant names appended twice, SEO keywords stuffed in) or descriptions that are empty because the long description lives in another field. In Product Feed Master you can map a different source column to description in the field mapping, and use transformation rules such as trim and replace to clean titles on every sync; how to clean product data with transformation rules has worked examples. The free feed checker lists products with missing titles or descriptions and titles over 150 characters before you upload.

Frequently asked questions

How long can a Google Shopping title be?

Up to 150 characters, but Google strongly encourages 70 or fewer, because Shopping ads and free listings show up to 70 characters.

What is the maximum description length in Google Merchant Center?

5,000 characters. Google recommends about 500–1,000 characters with the key details early.

Is there a minimum description length?

Google flags descriptions that are too short but doesn't publish an exact minimum; it recommends about 500–1,000 characters.

Sources