Selling Products Without a GTIN on Google Shopping (Shopify): the Right Way

Short answer: Not every product has a GTIN (the manufacturer's barcode), and that's fine — handmade, custom, vintage, and your-own-brand items often have none. Google allows products without a GTIN, but you have to tell it they have none, or it keeps reporting "Missing value [GTIN]." On Shopify you do that in the Google & YouTube channel by marking the item as a Custom product (so Shopify stops sending an identifier it doesn't have), and by supplying a brand and, where you can, an MPN instead. What you must never do is invent a barcode to silence the error — Google validates it and a fake one fails.

Here's how to list no-GTIN products cleanly so they get approved instead of disapproved.

When a product genuinely has no GTIN

A GTIN is assigned by the manufacturer. You legitimately won't have one for:

• Handmade or made-to-order items
• Custom or personalized products
• Vintage or one-of-a-kind pieces
• Your own private-label brand, if you haven't bought barcodes for it

For these, "no GTIN" is the correct answer, and Google accepts it — as long as you mark it correctly.

What Google wants instead

For a product with no GTIN, Google wants whatever identifiers you do have:

• Brand — always set this. On Shopify it comes from the Vendor field. Never leave it blank, and never use a placeholder like "N/A" or your store name.
• MPN (manufacturer part number) — if the product has one, supply it. For your own brand, your product's model/style code can serve as the MPN.
• Then mark the product as having no GTIN so Google stops expecting one.

How to mark a no-GTIN product on Shopify

The step most people miss is the Custom product flag, which is what actually tells Google not to expect a barcode:

1. Set a real Vendor (brand) on the product in Shopify.
2. Open the Google & YouTube channel → Product status → Manage availability (the bulk editor).
3. Set Custom product to True for the items that have no barcode.
4. Leave the Barcode field empty for those items (don't put a SKU or a made-up number there).

With Custom product set to True, Shopify stops sending a GTIN and Google stops flagging the missing value. (The reverse — a product that does have a barcode but is wrongly flagged Custom — is the missing-GTIN error; set that one to False.)

What not to do

• Don't invent a GTIN. Google validates the check digit, so a made-up number fails as invalid GTIN, and repeatedly submitting false identifiers risks a misrepresentation strike.
• Don't put your SKU in the Barcode field. A SKU is your internal code and is not a valid GTIN or MPN.
• Don't leave Brand blank. A no-GTIN product still needs a brand, or Google has nothing to identify it by.

Do no-GTIN products perform worse?

Slightly, sometimes — a GTIN helps Google match your product to the known catalog and show it in more competitive placements. But a correctly-marked no-GTIN product with a strong title, image, and brand still shows and sells. For handmade and custom goods, where no barcode exists, this is simply how it works, and it's completely allowed.

See every product missing an identifier at a glance. Feed Doctor scans your whole Shopify catalog and flags the items with a missing or invalid GTIN, a blank brand, or no usable identifier — so you can mark the genuinely custom ones correctly and fix the ones that should have had a barcode, before Google disapproves them. Try it free for 7 days.