Your second-hand stock is going to Google as brand new

You connected Shopify to Google, and every second-hand item in your shop went over as brand new. There is no switch in your product setup to fix it, and you did not miss one.

The short answer: Google requires a condition on used and refurbished products and will disapprove the ones that break the rule, Shopify's Google and YouTube channel gives you nowhere in a product's details to say it, and — the part almost nobody separates out — marking your products used does not stop Google asking for barcodes. Those are two different faults with two different fixes, and the fix an antique dealer is pointed to is not the one Google's own pages describe for somebody selling used branded clothing.

What Google actually requires, and what it does about it

Google's rule is short. The condition attribute is "Optional for each new product" and "Required for each used and refurbished product", with three values: new, refurbished and used.

The consequence is stated just as plainly: "If you don't follow these requirements, we'll disapprove your product and let you know in your Merchant Center account."

So a shop full of second-hand goods going over as new is not a cosmetic problem. It is a documented breach with a documented penalty, and the penalty arrives item by item.

Shopify documents a Condition column, and documents that the channel ignores it

This is the part that makes merchants feel they have gone mad, and it is worth seeing in Shopify's own words.

There is a Condition column in Shopify. It appears in the product CSV, in a group of columns Shopify labels as Google Shopping fields — alongside Gender, Age Group, MPN, Custom Product and the custom labels. You can fill it in. You can import it.

And on the same help page, in the same breath, Shopify says:

"However, the Google and YouTube channel doesn't use these metafields."

That is the whole experience in one sentence. The field a merchant finds when they go looking is a column apps may read, and the channel Shopify actually ships ignores it. Meanwhile Shopify's own pages for setting up that channel — its requirements page, its product-syncing page, its troubleshooting page — do not mention condition at all. What they do document is the other half of your morning: "Google requires you to have a unique product identifier for each of your products", and if a product has a barcode "then you need to add it before you can publish the product."

Shopify does document one route for a product with no barcode: "For products without a GTIN, you need to add an MPN (Manufacturer Part Number) and brand to the product data in the Google & YouTube channel." Read that as a second-hand seller and you will see the problem — a manufacturer part number is not something that arrives with a bag of donated shirts either.

What one reply reports, and you should go and look rather than take our word for it. A reply in that April 2023 thread — from the developer of one of the apps named further down this page — says the Google channel's own Manage Products screen opens a bulk editor with a Condition column in it, and that setting products to used there works. We could not find that column on any Shopify-owned page: Shopify's bulk-editing documentation names only price, SKU and compare-at price. So this is one person's account rather than something Shopify states, and the person has an app in the subject. It takes two minutes to check in your own shop, and if the column is there, it is the cheapest answer to the first fault.

Second-hand shop going to Google as new? Describe which of your products are used and which have no barcode →

The two faults are not one fault, and this is where the advice you will find goes wrong

Here is the thing to take away, because it will save you a month.

The barcode demand is not a consequence of the condition being wrong. Google's own guidance for used and vintage sellers tells them to submit the manufacturer's barcode and set the condition to used. Nowhere does Google say that declaring something used excuses it from identifiers. So flipping every product to used clears the first fault and leaves the second one exactly where it was.

The documented escape from the identifier demand is a separate attribute, and reading its page carefully is the whole trick:

"If your product is new (which you submit using the condition [condition] attribute) and it doesn't have assigned product identifiers that meet the requirements below, you should submit the identifier exists [identifier_exists] attribute with a value of no [no] or false [false]."

Note what that sentence is addressed to: a new product with no identifier. And the examples Google gives of products that might not have one are "Custom goods or one-of-a-kind products, like custom T-shirts, art, or handmade goods" and "Products produced before GTINs were introduced, like vintage products, antiques, books published before 1970, and other special products."

Used and second-hand goods are not on that list.

That single absence explains why two merchants with what looks like the same problem get different results. The dealer selling antique coins has genuinely identifier-less goods — they are on Google's list, the escape applies, and a merchant in that position reported it resolving their case. The shop selling used authentic football shirts does not: those shirts were made with manufacturer barcodes, and the seller simply does not know what they are. Declaring them identifier-less is not a fix, it is a claim about the goods — and Google states the consequence of getting it wrong in that direction: "if the product does have a GTIN assigned and you don't submit it, then the product could be disapproved."

The merchant who put this best was asking in April 2023:

"Currently feeding as NEW to the Google Merchant Centre, so I am being chased for GTINs."

Five replies, nobody from Shopify, and no accepted answer. Elsewhere in the same corner of the forum, one shop had 20,000 items to change by hand, and another was asking about 2,500 used retro games in 2024.

Which route is yours

The apps, named honestly rather than sold. The cheapest feed app we read is Simprosys Google Shopping Feed, from $4.99 a month up to five hundred products and rising by catalogue size to $17.99 — it has been listed since August 2017 and carries 4.9 stars from nearly five thousand reviews, which is the strongest track record in this corner. Be straight about one thing before you buy it for this: its listing advertises barcode management and does not mention condition anywhere, so ask the vendor directly whether it sets condition before you assume it does. The other app worth knowing is JSON-LD for SEO, at $399 a year, which does name product condition — but it works on your storefront's structured data rather than on the feed, so it answers the half a shopper and a search engine see, not the half Merchant Center complains about. And the route that actually resolved a real merchant's identifier problem cost nothing: a rule inside Google Merchant Center itself.

What Shopivibe does

You describe the split in your own words — everything from this supplier is second-hand, these refurbished lines come with a warranty, the pre-1970 stock never had a barcode — and the condition and the identifier decision are worked out for each product from your own catalogue. Supplier, product type, tag, whether a barcode exists at all: the things that already distinguish your stock become the rule, instead of twenty thousand products changed by hand.

The part that is worth more than the field-setting, and the reason this is not just a bulk edit: the identifier question is a judgement, and getting it wrong across a whole catalogue is the risk. A hand-built job declares everything identifier-less because that makes the warnings stop. What you want is the opposite — the genuinely identifier-less goods declared as such, the branded second-hand stock left alone, and the difference drawn from your own data rather than from whichever setting silences Merchant Center fastest.

And it keeps holding for the products you list next week, which is where a one-off bulk edit always fails: the shop that fixed twenty thousand items in March has the same problem again by June.

Describe which of your products are second-hand, which are refurbished and which never had a barcode, and a person here has it working in your store within 24 hours.

Shopivibe solves the problem in your store and keeps what it adds maintained, including when Shopify changes something underneath. Shopivibe is free during early access, with 3,500 credits included. Credits beyond the included 3,500 cost $0.06 each.

Being chased for barcodes on second-hand stock? Describe which of your products genuinely have no barcode →