Feed attribute
brand
Brand name
The brand attribute is the name of the brand a product belongs to, and it is what makes a manufacturer part number meaningful and a listing eligible for brand-based matching. On Shopify it maps most often from the vendor field, which is unreliable because merchants commonly use vendor to record a supplier or distributor rather than the consumer-facing brand.
Specification
- Attribute
- brand
- Data type
- Text
- Limit
- 70 characters
- Format
- The consumer-facing brand name as it appears on the product, not a supplier, distributor or internal category. For own-brand goods, use your own store's brand name. Do not use "Generic", "N/A", "None" or a placeholder: channels treat those as missing rather than as a declaration.
- Examples
-
NorthwindAcme Tools
Support by channel
How each channel treats brand.
| Channel | Requirement | Field name | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Shopping | Required in some cases | brand | Required for all products except movies, books and musical recordings. |
| Meta | Recommended | brand | |
| Microsoft Advertising | Required in some cases | brand | Expected alongside gtin or mpn. |
| Optional | brand | ||
| OpenAI | Required | brand | Required, and sits alongside a required seller_name that no Shopify product field supplies, so that one comes from a static store-level value. |
Frequently asked questions
Can I map brand from the Shopify vendor field?
Often, but check it first. Shopify's vendor field is free text with no validation, and many stores use it for the supplier, the distributor or an internal grouping rather than the brand a shopper would recognise. Where it is unreliable, a metafield or a lookup table mapping vendor values to real brand names is more dependable.
What do I put in brand for own-brand products?
Your own store or product-line brand name. Every product a shopper could identify by brand should carry one, and for own-brand goods that brand is you.
Which products do not need a brand?
Google exempts movies, books and musical recordings, which are identified by their GTIN or ISBN instead. Everything else is expected to carry a brand, and placeholder values such as "Generic" or "N/A" count as missing.
Errors involving this attribute
Related attributes
- gtin The gtin attribute is the globally unique barcode number a manufacturer assigns to a product, covering UPC, EAN, JAN and ISBN formats. Channels use it to match an item against the same product sold elsewhere, and on Shopify it comes from the variant's barcode field, which is optional in the admin and therefore frequently empty.
- mpn The mpn attribute is the part number a manufacturer uses to identify a product in its own catalogue, and it serves as the fallback identifier when an item has no GTIN. Unlike a GTIN it is only unique within one manufacturer, so it is meaningless to a channel unless the brand attribute is supplied alongside it.
- identifier_exists The identifier_exists attribute is an explicit declaration that a product has no manufacturer-assigned identifiers, set to no when a GTIN, MPN and brand genuinely do not exist for the item. It is a statement about the product, not a way to silence identifier warnings, and channels treat misuse as a data quality problem rather than a resolution.
Related concepts
Primary sources
Channel specifications change. These are the official documents this page is based on.