Catalog Feed Checker for Pinterest Ads

How to check a Pinterest catalog feed

A Pinterest catalog feed is all or nothing: Pinterest's retail catalog requirements warn that missing or badly formatted required fields make the entire catalog fail ingestion. Run your file through this checker before you add it as a data source, so a single broken column doesn't stop every Pin.

1. Add your product feed. Upload the CSV, TSV or XML you'll give Pinterest, paste rows from Google Sheets, or open the sample garden shop catalog.
2. Check the field matches. Headers like Image_Link or Item Group ID are matched to Pinterest's names; both gtin and GTIN are accepted.
3. Pick your currency. Prices written as 24.99 are fine in USD; for any other currency the code is added so Pinterest doesn't assume dollars.
4. Fix the errors first. They are the problems that can block ingestion. Warnings, such as possible variants without a group, come next.
5. Download. Take the corrected CSV, the list of products still to fix, and the summary of problems by share of the catalog.

Pinterest product feed requirements it tests

• Prices — Pinterest is flexible: 24.99 USD, 24,99USD and GBP 24.99 all work. Symbols and 0 do not.
• Availability — in stock, out of stock or preorder, in plain American English.
• Product type — up to five levels joined by > with a space on each side; commas and pipes aren't read as levels.
• Short attributes — color, size, material and pattern have 30 characters, brand 100, mpn 70, custom labels 511.
• Images — commas in image URLs are encoded, and placeholder pictures are flagged.

What to do next in Pinterest

1. Check you're eligible. You need a business account, a claimed website, the Pinterest tag installed, and contact details, a shipping policy and a refund policy on your site.
2. Add the data source. Go to Catalogs and product groups > Add data source, then choose Provide URL link for a hosted file or Upload manually. Pick the country and language carefully — they can't be changed later.
3. Validate a sample. Use Test your data source with a few rows plus the header, then Validate data source.
4. Keep IDs unique across sources. Don't reuse item IDs from another data source, and remember that deleting a data source removes all its products and product groups for good.
5. Refresh it. A linked file is ingested every 24 hours. Re-upload a manual file within 30 days to stay in organic results.

Common Pinterest product feed errors and fixes

Pinterest catalog ingestion failed

Look at the required columns first. A missing availability column or a blank image_link is enough to stop the whole catalog, so these appear as errors here even when they hit only one row.

Pinterest catalog price format

Pinterest accepts the code before or after the number, with or without a space, and a comma or a dot for decimals. It rejects currency symbols and zero prices. Without a code it assumes USD, which quietly turns a euro or pound price into dollars.

Pinterest catalog link length

Long UTM strings can push a product link past 511 characters. Shorten the URL, or move tracking into the separate ad_link field, which holds the full URL with tracking.

Pinterest catalog item_group_id for variants

Rows that share a name but differ by size or color are flagged when the file has no item_group_id column. Pinterest requires the group ID for products with variants.

Encoding and floating delimiters

Data sources must be UTF-8, so a Windows Excel export shows broken accents. Pinterest also asks for the same number of delimiters on every row; an empty column at the end of each line counts as a floating delimiter. The corrected download fixes both.

HTML in the description

The description field is plain text. HTML tags and codes like & are converted in the corrected file; use description_html for a formatted version.