Products that no longer exist are sent to Google via the API costing THOUSANDS $

Hi @joyryde,

I understand you’re having an issue that’s costing you money, so let’s do our best to figure out what’s happening here.

First, I’d like to highlight a section of our FAQ:

To exclude a product, one can choose to “Don’t Sync and Show” the product under the “Channel Visibility” box on the product edit page. If a synced product is deleted/trashed, it will also get removed from the Google Merchant Center.

To keep the product information displayed in Shopping ads and free listings up-to-date, all products synced to Google Merchant Center expire after 30 days if they are not updated. A daily update job is scheduled to run at 3 AM (store time) to re-sync the expiring products and keep them active. A product is marked as expiring if it expires within three days.

This means if the product was synced from your site, and you deleted it back in 2023 the product would also been removed from GMC. Additionally if you don’t have updates for any products in 30 days they’d also be marked as expired.

Just to be safe, though, you could run a delete all synced products and re-sync again and see if the issue persists or the product is removed.

However, upon further inspection, the screenshot you shared also mentions this was last checked on your site yesterday, so I also tried going to the URL and I see it’s redirecting from https://nomadicsupply.com/quietkat-1up-usa-e-bike-rack-with-fat-tire-kit/ to https://nomadicsupply.com/quietkat-pivot-pro-vehicle-trailer-hitch-e-bike-rack/. (The URL for the images all lead to a page not found, so that’s good).

Maybe this URL redirect is causing an error with Google Merchant Center still picking up the item as it checks for the URL and it finds a product (other one, though). This would be worth reviewing in further detail. If you’re in touch with Google about this issue it’d be wise asking if this could be what’s happening. Additionally, do you have any redirection in place for this case? Can you remove it and see if this fixes the issue?

Please keep us posted.

Thanks!
-OP

Hi,

All products that get deleted because they were discontinued are always redirected to a new product. In this case, the new product is also in Google Merchant Center, as it’s own product, so I don’t think the redirection is the issue.

If we do the “run a delete all synced products and re-sync again” will there be any catastrophic issues with that?

Hi @joyryde,

Thanks for the quick reply.

All products that get deleted because they were discontinued are always redirected to a new product. In this case, the new product is also in Google Merchant Center, as it’s own product, so I don’t think the redirection is the issue.

This can help us confirm if the redirection is the issue by looking at it from the other perspective. Do you have other deleted products showing up on your GMC? Can you remember any of the ones you deleted last year, and can you double-check if they’re still showing up in your Merchant Center?

If we do the “run a delete all synced products and re-sync again” will there be any catastrophic issues with that?

Since you’ll add the products again and they’ll have the same IDs they’re already approved and will sync without issues, they’ll retain their historic report campaigns, too.

Thanks!
-OP

We will run the delete and re-sync now.

Looking at the API Feed for that product, it says:

LAST UPDATE TIME: Sep 2, 2023 1:07:23?PM

https://tinyurl.com/2b6spkxu

We checked 3 other examples of deleted and redirected products, not one appears in Google Merchant Center.

We ran the delete job, it said:

Successfully scheduled a job to delete all synced products!

We aren’t sure how to know if it ran, so we did it 3 times.

After running it 3 times, there are 41 random products in Merchant Center, including the long-deleted one:

https://tinyurl.com/295fwsxv

We do not know why those are there after running the delete job 3 times, but we can force Google to delete them manually.

• This reply was modified 6 months, 1 week ago by joyryde.

?? hey @joyryde

Thank you for reaching back, with further details on this. I’ll loop back to the following bit of the original inquiry:

Here is a screenshot of your plugin showing that the product does NOT exist:

https://tinyurl.com/25l5cjus

It appears that both the CTX Feed, and Ali2Woo (dropshipping, from AliExpress, I assume), are currently active — as they can be seen on the vertical menu.

We do not know why those are there after running the delete job 3 times

The culprit appears to be conflicting functionality from other plugins.

Kindly go ahead with temporarily disabling all other plugins, and custom code, while keeping only WooCommerce and Google Listings & Ads active, and see if the issue persists, or otherwise.

I hope this is helpful!?We look forward to your response. In the meantime, please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

CTX Feed is used to push a CSV file to Facebook. It’s mandatory. Ali2Woo is for ordering products from AliExpress, also mandatory.

Hi @joyryde

We do not know why those are there after running the delete job 3 times, but we can force Google to delete them manually.

If you’ve already removed all synced products from the debug page and they’re still appearing in the merchant center, I’d recommend reaching out to Google support to delete these products for you manually.

CTX Feed is used to push a CSV file to Facebook. It’s mandatory. Ali2Woo is for ordering products from AliExpress, also mandatory.

While it’s understandable that you’re confident about the functioning of your website, it’s also important to consider potential conflicts with other plugins. The CTX Feed and Ali2Woo you mentioned might be conflicting with the Google Listings & Ads plugin, causing this issue.

To troubleshoot, I would recommend temporarily disabling these plugins and then running the synchronization again. If the problem persists, it would be helpful if you could provide us with any error logs related to the Google Listings & Ads plugin.

I know this is a frustrating situation, but rest assured, we are committed to helping you resolve this issue. Looking forward to your response.

Hi there ?? ,

We haven’t heard from you in a while; this is to check if you’ve been able to proceed with the troubleshooting steps provided before and if you still need help.

Thanks!
-OP

We deleted the 41 random products in Merchant Center. We cannot disable CTX Feed and Ali2Woo as they are required for the ecommerce website to function.

The product that was not supposed to have been pushed to Google from the plugin did not return.

Hello joyryde

Thank you for your reply.

I understand that disabling plugins on an active site is not a feasible option.
As an alternate solution, may I suggest setting up a Staging site?
This way you can have a clone site where you can perform troubleshooting without affecting the live site.

Some web hosts provide a staging site feature by default.
Or you can use a plugin like WP Staging to quickly create a staging site.

Let me know about your thoughts on this.

Best regards.

Howdy ?? We haven’t heard back from you in a while, so I’m going to mark this as resolved – we’ll be here if and/or when you are ready to continue.