Fetch Google Shopping Feeds

Request fresh fetches for your file-based Merchant Center data sources and log every outcome in a Google Sheet.

This free script asks Merchant Center to re-fetch your file-based data sources on demand, instead of waiting for their next scheduled fetch, and writes what happened to a Google Sheet. It is the answer to "I updated the feed file, so why is Merchant Center still showing yesterday's prices?".

What it does on each run

The script lists every data source in your Merchant Center account, page by page so large accounts are covered in full, and looks at each one in turn. A data source gets a fetch request only when it takes a file as input and has fetch settings enabled. Everything else is recorded and skipped rather than silently ignored, so the sheet shows the whole account, not just the parts that acted.

What lands in the sheet

Results go to a tab named Feeds, which is cleared and rewritten on every run, so the sheet always reflects the latest run rather than growing indefinitely. Each row holds:

• Date and time of the run.
• Merchant Center ID.
• Feed name and feed ID.
• Status.
• Fetch URL.
• Content type, reported as Primary product, Supplemental product, Local inventory, or Promotion.

Reading the status column

A fetch error affects only its own row. The script keeps going through the remaining data sources rather than stopping at the first failure.

Setting it up

1. Enable the Merchant API Accounts and Merchant API DataSources sub-APIs from Advanced APIs.
2. Set merchantId to your Merchant Center account ID.
3. Set merchantApiDeveloperEmail to the email address of the Google account that authorizes the script.
4. Optionally set spreadsheetURL. Leave it empty and the script creates a report spreadsheet for you and logs the URL.
5. Run the script.

The authorizing account needs Admin access to your Merchant Center account.

The first run registers your access

Merchant API requires the script's Google Cloud project to be registered with your Merchant Center account once. The script checks whether that registration already exists before trying to create one, so it registers exactly once and keeps your Merchant Center API Diagnostics report free of failed requests.

When the registration is missing, the first run creates it, logs that activation takes about five minutes and stops. Wait, then run the script again. Later runs go straight to work.

When Admin access sits on a manager account

If the authorizing Google account has Admin access to a Merchant Center advanced (manager) account rather than to the shop account itself, registration against the shop account fails and Google names the account it will accept instead.

Put that account ID in merchantApiRegistrationAccountId and run again. One registration covers every Merchant Center account that user can reach, and data sources are still read from merchantId.

When to use this script

Reach for it when your feed file updates more often than Merchant Center fetches it, typically because prices or stock move during the day and the scheduled fetch is once every 24 hours. Scheduling this script a few times a day closes that gap without changing anything in your feed setup.

It is also useful after a bulk change. Push a corrected file, run the script and check the sheet to confirm every data source was picked up rather than assuming it was.

Practical tips

• Point spreadsheetURL at a fixed sheet once you are past testing, so you always look in the same place.
• Check the skipped rows the first time you run it. A data source you expected to refresh but that reads "fetch disabled" is a Merchant Center setting to change, not a script problem.
• Do not schedule it more often than your file actually changes. Re-fetching an unchanged file costs you the request and gains nothing.

See also Shopping Product Alert, which uses the same Merchant API setup and tells you when the products in these feeds stop serving.