A new mysterious warning has been popping up on Google Merchant Center for some users. The ambiguous warning says:
“Invalid rich text value in attribute: description.”
Upon investigation, users report that they are not able to identify the invalid text that is triggering the error.
Google’s support team has no official solution for this issue and is not able to identify the cause.
Through our own testing, we have found a solution that resolves this warning when nothing else works.
The error is occasionally triggered by ampersands, “&,” which were not a problem, previously.
If you see this warning in your Google Merchant Center account and can not identify a clear solution, try to see if removing ampersands from your data will resolve the warning.
Brian Roizen is the Cofounder and Chief Architect of Feedonomics, a full-service feed optimization platform that optimizes product data for hundreds of channels. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and eCommerce webinars, and regularly contributes to Search Engine Land and other industry-leading blogs. Brian graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
