Unit Pricing Measure Errors in Merchant Center: How to Fix

What this issue means

Unit pricing lets Google show a price per unit, such as "$1.20 / 100 ml," next to your product. It's built from two attributes:

Google calculates the unit price from your price and these values. For example, a measure of 150 fl oz, a base measure of 100 fl oz and a price of 3 USD gives 2 USD per 100 fl oz.

For US stores unit pricing is optional, so these errors are usually warnings that limit the unit price display rather than disapprovals. In the EU, EFTA countries, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, it's required for products sold by weight, volume, length or area, and missing or invalid values can block those products.

Why it happens

• Empty or zero values. The integration sends 0, 0ct or a blank value for products without unit data. Many Shopify stores saw "Invalid real number" warnings this way.
• Missing unit. 750 instead of 750ml.
• Unsupported units or spellings, such as litre, grams or pcs instead of the codes Google accepts.
• Comma decimals. 0,75l instead of 0.75l.
• Mismatched unit types. A measure in ml with a base measure in kg.
• Imperial units in the UK. Google interprets imperial units as US units, so UK sellers should use metric values.
• Using unit pricing on products that aren't sold by measure, like apparel.

How to fix it

1. Find the affected items. In Products > Needs attention, filter by the unit pricing issue. Check the current values of both attributes on a few products.
2. Use supported units. Google accepts:
   • Weight: oz, lb, mg, g, kg
   • US volume: floz, pt, qt, gal
   • Metric volume: ml, cl, l, cbm
   • Length: in, ft, yd, cm, m
   • Area: sqft, sqm
   • Per unit: ct (and sheet, item in Australia and New Zealand only)
3. Format values correctly. A positive number with a period for decimals, immediately followed by the unit: 750ml, 1.5kg, 12ct. Use the same unit type in the base measure, for example 100ml, 1kg, 1ct.
4. Fix it at the source.
   • Shopify (Google & YouTube app): The app sends unit price data from Shopify's unit price fields on each variant, where available. Fill in the total measurement and base measure for products sold by weight or volume. For products that don't need unit pricing, make sure the fields are empty. Merchants have reported that warnings sometimes persist after source edits, in which case an attribute rule in Merchant Center is the practical fix.
   • WooCommerce: Map unit pricing fields in your feed plugin (many use custom fields or attributes). Make sure the plugin doesn't output the attribute when values are empty.
   • Feed files: Add correct values to both columns, or remove the columns entirely if you don't use unit pricing.
5. Use attribute rules or a supplemental source for bulk fixes. In your data source settings, create a rule that sets values for a group of products, or clears both attributes for products where unit pricing doesn't apply. For products genuinely sold per piece, some merchants set both to 1ct; only do this where per-unit pricing is accurate.
6. Send one variant per item. Each size (500 ml, 1 l) should be a separate product with its own measure, sharing an item_group_id.
7. Reprocess with a new fetch or resync and confirm the issue clears.

How long until it's fixed

Attribute rule changes and corrected data apply on the next processing of your data source, usually within hours to a day. The Needs attention count may lag behind, so give it a couple of days before assuming a fix didn't work.

How to prevent it

• Only send unit pricing attributes when you have real values.
• Standardize units in your product database rather than fixing them in the feed.
• Validate new products with our Merchant Center feed checker.
• If you expand to the EU, UK or Australia, add unit pricing for every product sold by measure before launch.

For more on clean attribute data, read our guide to product feed optimization. Selling internationally? Mercantads can build compliant feeds for each market. Contact us.