Why Marketplaces Reject Your Product Feed

You submitted the feed and it was rejected, often without a comprehensible explanation. Below are the most frequent causes, all of which you can check yourself before submitting.

1. Categories not mapped to the marketplace directory

Your category tree and the marketplace's tree are different things. Passing your own category name is not enough: an explicit mapping to the marketplace's directory is required. This is the most labour-intensive part of the work and the most common reason for rejection.

2. Product variants handled incorrectly

Is a T-shirt in five sizes one offer or five? Stock levels, prices and how the listing appears in the marketplace catalogue all depend on the answer. The typical mistake is giving every variant the same identifier, after which the feed is rejected for duplicates.

A trap specific to some platforms: there may be two separate identifier spaces — one for the product and one for the variant. If the wrong one ends up in the feed, the data gets muddled after launch rather than before it.

3. Availability contradicting stock

An item marked "in stock" with a zero quantity is grounds not only for rejection but for penalties after launch, once buyers start receiving cancellations.

4. Images not reachable by direct link

The marketplace's crawler has to fetch the image with an ordinary request. If the link returns a redirect, requires authentication or is blocked by your site protection, the feed will not pass.

5. The feed generates too slowly

For a large catalogue, generating on the fly for every request takes minutes. The crawler will not wait that long and marks the feed unavailable. The fix is scheduled generation into a file.

6. Required fields left empty

Every platform has its own minimum: identifier, link, price, currency, category, name, availability. Valid XML with your own choice of fields will not save the feed — the structure has to match the specific service's requirements.

What to check before submitting

Open the feed in a browser via its direct link: it should be served without authentication and within seconds. Check a few random products to confirm prices and stock match the store. Make sure the images open on their own.

Setting up an export for a specific platform is the Rozetka, Prom and Hotline feed service. The technical side of the formats is covered in the article on product feeds. If stock figures in the store are unreliable to begin with, you first need synchronisation with your accounting system.