Duplicate products

What this error means

Each product you submit should be a distinct offer. When Google decides two or more of your items are not different enough to tell apart, it keeps one and flags the rest as duplicates. This is often a shared product id, but it can also happen when offers have nearly identical titles, descriptions, images, and attributes.

Why it happens

There are a few common causes. The same product is submitted more than once, sometimes because two feeds overlap or a feed was uploaded twice. Product variants are not distinguished from one another, so their title, image, or variant attributes such as colour, size, or material are the same across what should be separate items. Or a product id was reused for a different product. Google needs each offer to be uniquely identifiable, so any of these makes items collapse into duplicates.

How to fix it

1. Give every product and every variant its own unique, stable id.
2. Make each variant genuinely distinct. Its title, image, and variant attributes such as color, size, and material should describe that specific variant, not the shared parent product.
3. Check whether more than one feed submits the same products, since overlapping feeds create duplicates.
4. Do not reuse an old id for a different product.
5. Update the feed and wait for re-crawl.

Fixing it in your store

Your store already holds a unique identifier for every product and variant, such as the SKU. This error usually means the feed is either collapsing variants into one offer or carrying too little that sets them apart. Map the feed id to a field that is unique per sellable variant, make sure variant attributes and images differ per variant so each offer is clearly its own, and confirm no second feed covers the same products.

How long until it clears

Once each offer is uniquely identifiable and the feed is re-crawled, expect the duplicates to clear within 1 to 3 days.