To maintain an active data feed, you must update the feed every:
Correct Answer
A) 30 days
Key takeaways
A feed expires 30 days after its last successful upload, and expired products stop serving.
Even an unchanged catalogue must be re-submitted to stay active.
Price and availability should be refreshed far more often than the 30-day minimum.
Why is this the correct answer?
A feed expires 30 days after its last successful upload, and when it expires the products stop serving. That is why every feed needs a schedule rather than a one-off upload: even a catalogue that never changes has to be re-submitted to stay active. In practice most merchants refresh far more often than the minimum, because price and availability drift, and a listing whose price does not match the landing page is a disapproval risk rather than merely a stale one.
Why are the other options wrong?
B) 6 months
Six months is well past the expiry point. The products would have stopped serving five months earlier.
C) 1 year
A yearly upload would leave the feed inactive for eleven of the twelve months.
D) 24 hours
Daily updating is sensible practice and many merchants do it, but it is not the requirement. The question asks for the interval at which the feed must be refreshed to remain active, which is 30 days.
Frequently asked questions about this topic
How do I schedule automatic feed updates?
In Merchant Center, open Products and then Feeds, select the primary feed and use its Schedule setting to have Google fetch the file from a URL at a set time and frequency. A scheduled fetch removes the expiry risk entirely, because the feed refreshes without anyone remembering to upload it.
What happens when my feed expires?
The items stop being eligible to serve, so the Shopping campaign quietly loses its inventory while the campaign itself still looks active. Merchant Center flags this on the Diagnostics page, which is worth checking whenever impressions drop without an obvious bidding cause.
How can I keep price and stock accurate between feed uploads?
Use supplemental feeds for frequently changing attributes, or the Content API for near-real-time updates. Google also offers automatic item updates, which corrects price and availability from structured data on your product pages when it detects a mismatch.
Official documentation: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6167192?hl=en
About the Shopping Ads Certification
The Shopping Ads Certification checks that you can run retail campaigns end to end: product data in Merchant Center, linking it to Google Ads, and choosing between Standard Shopping and Performance Max to drive sales and value.
Exam guide and all 407 Google Ads Shopping questions →Related Google Ads Shopping questions
- 1Ricky is an online golf equipment merchant who just created a new Google Merchant Center account. When Ricky creates his first data feed, he must add unique product identifiers for his products. Which combination of ‘gtin,’ ‘mpn,’ and ‘brand’ is valid?
- 2You’re building a product feed for a client who is new to Shopping ads. You notice inaccuracies in the client’s inventory data. If a product feed is uploaded with data quality issues, what are two issues that might arise? Choose two. Select 2 Correct ResponsesMultiple correct
- 3You’re building a product feed for a client who is new to Shopping ads, and you notice the client’s inventory data isn’t accurate. What two things may happen if the feed is uploaded with data quality issues? Choose two. Select 2 Correct ResponsesMultiple correct
- 4You are working with a client who is new to Shopping ads and you noticed that the inventory data the client plans to use for their product feed isn’t accurate. If a product feed is uploaded with data quality issues, what are two issues that might arise? Choose two. Select 2 Correct ResponsesMultiple correct
- 5Gina owns a woodworking shop that makes custom cabinets. She uploads data to her Google Merchant Center to help create ads from her inventory. What data does a Shopping campaign use from her Merchant Center feed to place Gina’s ads?
- 6Catherine is preparing to release a new line of toys that’s currently available for pre-order only on the landing page. Why is Catherine’s data feed getting disapproved for incorrect availability?