Fix: fewer products in your product feed than expected

You’ve run your feed and it contains far fewer products than your store has — or it’s completely empty. In most cases, a setting in your feed configuration is filtering products out without you realising it.

This guide covers the most common causes. Work through each one that applies to your setup until your product count is correct.

Common causes

1. “Include product variations” is disabled
2. “And only include default product variation” is enabled
3. “And only include lowest priced product variation(s)” is enabled
4. Both “And only include default product variation” and “And only include lowest priced product variation(s)” are enabled
5. “Create a preview of the feed” is enabled
6. The item_group_id attribute is removed from Field Mapping
7. Incorrect filter configuration
8. A caching plugin is serving an old version of the feed
9. Products excluded by total sales or date range filters
10. Feed statistics show zero products for JSONL or gzip format feeds (Elite)

Troubleshooting

“Include product variations” is disabled

If your store has both simple and variable products and you want both in your feed, the Include product variations option must be enabled.



> Note: When this option is disabled, the feed includes simple products only. All variations are excluded.

“And only include default product variation” is enabled

When And only include default product variation is enabled, the plugin checks each variable product for a default variation. If it finds one, that variation is included. If not, the entire variable product is excluded.



> Note: If none of your variable products have a default variation set, every variable product is excluded. If your store has only variable products, the feed will be empty.

“And only include lowest priced product variation(s)” is enabled

When And only include lowest priced product variation(s) is enabled, the plugin scans each variable product and includes only the variation(s) with the lowest price.



If multiple variations share the same lowest price, all of them are included. If all variations have the same price, all variations are included.

> Note: This can cause inconsistent product counts depending on how your variation prices are structured.

Both “And only include default product variation” and “And only include lowest priced product variation(s)” are enabled

When both options are enabled, the plugin applies them as an AND condition:

1. It identifies the default variation for each variable product.
2. It checks whether that default variation is also the lowest-priced variation.

A product is included only when both conditions are true. If either fails, the entire variable product is excluded.

> Note: If none of your variable products have a default variation set, the feed will be empty.

“Create a preview of the feed” is enabled

The Create a preview of the feed option generates a limited preview containing only the first five products. If the first product is variable, the feed may include five or fewer variations depending on its structure.



This option is for testing only. If it’s accidentally left on, the feed will look incomplete even though your store has many more products.

> Note: To generate a full feed, make sure Create a preview of the feed is disabled.

The item_group_id attribute is removed from Field Mapping

By default, Product Feed Pro includes a mapping for the item_group_id field. This field tells platforms like Google Shopping and Facebook which variations belong to the same parent product, so they can group them correctly.



> Important: If you remove the item_group_id mapping from the Field Mapping tab, the plugin can’t identify parent–child relationships between variations. Your feed may appear incomplete or incorrectly structured on the channel.

When generating feeds for Google Shopping or Facebook, always keep the default item_group_id mapping enabled.

Incorrect filter configuration

Filters let you include or exclude products based on conditions such as category, attribute, or tag. When filters are misconfigured, they can silently exclude products you intended to include — resulting in an empty or incomplete feed.

One common issue is using the include_only filter more than once in the same feed. For example, if you want to include both Clothing and T-shirts, you might add two separate include_only filters:



This doesn’t work. The include_only filter can only be used once per feed. When applied twice, the conditions conflict and products that don’t match both simultaneously are excluded.

Recommended fix: Create two separate feeds, each with a single include_only category filter.

For detailed instructions, see How to create filters for your product feed.

A caching plugin is serving an old version of the feed

Caching plugins can serve a saved (cached) version of your feed instead of the latest generated one. After you refresh your feed, the cached version may still appear until you clear the cache.

To fix this:

1. Clear or purge the cache in your caching plugin and your browser after updating the feed.
2. If the issue continues, temporarily disable the caching plugin to confirm it’s the cause.
3. To avoid clearing the cache repeatedly, exclude your feed folder from being cached. Add this URL pattern to your caching plugin’s exclusion list:

yourdomain.com/wp-content/uploads/woo-product-feed-pro/*

The * wildcard covers all feed files under that folder.

Products excluded by total sales or date range filters

Product Feed Pro can filter products based on their total sales count or sales within a specific time window. If you’ve enabled these filters and your products don’t meet the criteria, they’re excluded from the feed — which can result in a smaller or empty feed.

For example, if you’ve set a minimum of two total sales and most of your products have fewer, those products won’t appear.

For detailed instructions on how these filters work, see Create a Feed With Performing Products Only.

Feed statistics show zero products for JSONL or gzip format feeds (Elite)

If you’re using Product Feed Elite and the Feed statistics panel shows zero products for a feed you know has generated successfully, check the feed’s file format.

Earlier versions of the plugin had a bug where the statistics counter didn’t support JSONL, JSONL.GZ, or CSV.GZ formats. Feeds in those formats recorded a count of zero in the statistics view even though the feed file on disk was correct and complete.

> Note: This is a statistics display issue only — it doesn’t affect the actual products in your feed. The feed file is correct. Update the plugin to the latest version to resolve the statistics display.

This issue is most common with OpenAI Product Feed feeds, which use the JSONL.GZ or CSV.GZ format by default.

Need more help?

If you’ve worked through all of the above and products are still missing, reach out with your Feed URL and the plugin Feed System Log.

You can find the system log under Product Feed → Settings → System check. Click Copy to clipboard to copy the details, then share them in your support request.

If you’re a Product Feed Elite user, open a support ticket.

If you’re using the free version of Product Feed Pro, create a new topic on the WordPress.org forum.