Merchant Feed Booster Lite for WooCommerce

Merchant Feed Booster Lite does two things most feed plugins skip entirely: it generates a solid Google Merchant XML feed and tells you exactly why your products might be rejected or underperforming — before they reach Google.

The core problem it solves

You create a WooCommerce product, include it in your feed, and submit it to Google Merchant Center. Days later, some products are disapproved or showing low impressions. The rejection messages are vague. You have no idea which product has what issue, or what to change.

This plugin scans every product in your catalog against 25 named policy rules that mirror Google’s content requirements. Each issue comes with a rule ID, a plain-English explanation, and a specific fix hint — all visible in your WordPress admin before your feed ever reaches Google.

Google Merchant XML Feed

The plugin writes a properly formatted RSS 2.0 feed with the g: Google namespace to:

The feed URL is displayed on the Dashboard and can be copied with one click for pasting into Google Merchant Center as a scheduled fetch (Settings → Data sources → Add file).

What goes into the feed:

• g:id — WooCommerce product ID or SKU
• g:title — Product name (with optional store-wide prefix)
• g:description — Product description
• g:link — Product permalink
• g:image_link — Featured image URL
• g:price and g:sale_price — Regular and sale prices with currency code
• g:availability — in_stock or out_of_stock
• g:brand — Per-product field or store-wide default
• g:gtin — Barcode / EAN / UPC (validated)
• g:mpn — Manufacturer Part Number
• g:google_product_category — Full Google taxonomy path
• g:condition — new, refurbished, or used
• g:identifier_exists — Auto-set based on brand + GTIN/MPN

Feed reliability:

• Atomic file write — the plugin writes to a .tmp file first, then renames it, so the live feed is never half-written during regeneration
• WP-Cron auto-refresh: twice daily, daily, weekly, or a custom interval in hours
• Manual regeneration from the Dashboard at any time with live product count feedback
• Out-of-stock toggle — include OOS products with availability: out_of_stock or exclude them entirely

Per-product Google Fields

New fields appear on every WooCommerce product edit screen (General tab):

• Brand — Manufacturer or brand name, exported as g:brand
• GTIN — Barcode / EAN / UPC. Non-numeric characters are stripped on save. Validated against the GS1 check digit algorithm; shows a warning if structurally invalid without blocking the save
• MPN — Manufacturer Part Number, used when GTIN is not available
• Google Product Category — Full Google taxonomy path, e.g. Apparel & Accessories > Clothing
• Condition — new, refurbished, or used

Store-wide defaults for brand and Google product category can be set in Settings and are used as fallbacks when a product has no value filled in.

Feed Health — 25 Policy Rules

Every product in your catalog is checked against 25 named rules and assigned a health score from 0 to 100.

Title rules (T01–T08)

• T01 — Title under 25 characters — too short for meaningful ad targeting
• T02 — Title over 150 characters — Google truncates these in ads
• T03 — Promotional words in title (FREE, SALE, % OFF, etc.) — policy violation
• T04 — ALL CAPS words — policy violation
• T05 — HTML tags in title — breaks feed parsing
• T06 — Price mentioned in the title — not allowed by Google
• T07 — Special characters at the start or end of the title
• T08 — Repeated words in the title

Image rules (I01–I05)

• I01 — No product image set
• I02 — Image smaller than 100×100 px — Google rejects these outright
• I03 — Image smaller than 250×250 px — Google warns; lower ad quality
• I04 — Non-standard image format (not JPEG, PNG, GIF, or WebP)
• I05 — Tracking parameters in the image URL (e.g. ?utm_source=)

Price rules (P01–P04)

• P01 — Missing or zero price
• P02 — Sale price set but no regular price — Google requires both
• P03 — Sale price is equal to or greater than the regular price
• P04 — Non-numeric price value

Identifier rules (ID01–ID04)

• ID01 — GTIN has wrong digit count (valid: 8, 12, 13, or 14 digits)
• ID02 — GTIN fails the GS1 check digit algorithm — structurally invalid
• ID03 — Brand is set but neither GTIN nor MPN is provided
• ID04 — No brand set — required for most product categories

Description rules (D01–D04)

• D01 — No product description
• D02 — Description under 50 characters — too thin for Google
• D03 — HTML tags in the description
• D04 — Promotional language in the description (FREE, SALE, etc.)

Health score tiers:

• Excellent (85–100) — green — product meets all or nearly all requirements
• Good (70–84) — blue — minor issues; product will likely be approved
• Needs Work (50–69) — amber — several issues; moderate approval risk
• Poor (30–49) — orange — major issues; product is likely to underperform
• Critical (0–29) — red — severe violations; product will probably be disapproved

Scores are cached per-product using an MD5 hash of key fields (title, price, image, brand, GTIN, modified date). The score reloads instantly from cache when nothing changed and is automatically recalculated the moment a relevant field is updated on save.

Admin Pages

Dashboard

The main overview page shows the store-wide picture at a glance:

• Animated circular health score gauge showing your store’s average score
• Feed status (active / inactive) with last generation time
• Feed URL with one-click copy button
• Stats: products in feed, products scanned, errors, warnings
• Feed quality breakdown bars per category (Title, Image, Price, Identifiers, Description)
• Score distribution chart showing how many products fall in each tier
• 5 lowest-scored products that need immediate attention
• Top issues to fix, ranked by how many products they affect
• Recent activity log

Feed Health

Full product-by-product breakdown:

• Score badge (color-coded by tier) next to every product name
• Filter tabs: All Products, Issues Only, Title, Image, Price, Identifiers, Description
• Expandable detail row per product showing every failing rule — severity (Error / Warning / Notice), rule ID, message, and a specific fix hint
• Background scan with real-time progress bar — scans 50 products per batch, never times out on large catalogs
• Export to CSV — one row per product, one column per rule ID
• Clear Cache button to force a full rescan from scratch

Feed Preview

Live view of your feed items as they will appear in the XML file:

• One row per product, one column per field (Title, Image, Price, Sale Price, Brand, GTIN, MPN, Availability, Condition, Description)
• Cells highlighted red, amber, or blue when a policy rule affects that specific field
• Score gauge in the first column
• Pagination with configurable rows per page

Per-product Meta Box

Appears in the sidebar of every WooCommerce product edit screen:

• Color-coded score badge for this product
• Up to 5 failing rules with severity and rule ID
• Link to the full Feed Health report filtered to this product

Settings

All settings are AJAX-driven — no page reload needed:

• Enable / disable the feed (master switch)
• Feed title
• Product title prefix (prepended to every product title in the feed)
• Default brand (fallback for products with no brand set)
• Default Google product category (fallback for uncategorized products)
• Include out-of-stock products toggle
• Auto-refresh frequency: twice daily / daily / weekly / custom hours
• Preferred schedule time for daily refresh
• Enforce GTIN / MPN warnings
• Validate image dimensions

WP-CLI Commands

Developer Hooks

Filters

• cs_mfb_required_capability — Change the required admin capability (default: manage_woocommerce)
• cs_mfb_should_include_product — Return false to exclude a product from the feed
• cs_mfb_item_data — Modify any feed field before it is written to XML
• cs_mfb_extra_item_fields — Add extra g:* fields to a feed item
• cs_mfb_policy_rules — Add, remove, or modify the 25 policy rules
• cs_mfb_score_weights — Adjust the weight each rule contributes to the 0–100 score
• cs_mfb_health_table_columns — Add extra columns to the Feed Health table
• cs_mfb_include_hidden — Include catalog-hidden products in the feed (default: false)

Actions

• cs_mfb_ready — Fires after all plugin subsystems are initialized
• cs_mfb_register_admin_pages — Fires inside admin_menu — use to add sub-pages under Feed Booster
• cs_mfb_feed_generated — Fires after the XML feed file is written
• cs_mfb_before_item_written — Fires before each product item is serialized to XML
• cs_mfb_after_product_scored — Fires after a product is scored
• cs_mfb_after_health_table — Fires after the Feed Health table is rendered

Privacy

This plugin does not collect, transmit, or store any personal data. All feed generation, health scoring, GTIN validation, and image dimension checking runs entirely on your server. No external API calls are made.