Material identifies what a product is physically made of — leather, cotton, oak, stainless steel — and is submitted through the g:material tag in an XML feed or a material column in a CSV upload to Google Shopping and Meta Catalog. Unlike color and size, it's an optional attribute rather than a required one for most categories, but Google still recognizes it as a legitimate way to distinguish otherwise-identical products, which matters the moment a retailer sells the same jacket in both a wool and a leather version. The field takes a short descriptive value rather than a full composition breakdown, so it functions more like a merchandising label than a garment care tag.

Why it matters

Shoppers frequently filter or search by material — "leather boots," "oak dining table" — and Google Shopping's matching can use the material value to surface a listing against those queries even when the title doesn't spell it out. Leaving it blank doesn't cause a rejection the way a missing required field would, but it does mean the feed is relying entirely on the title and description to carry information the platform would otherwise use directly, which tends to produce weaker query matching for material-driven searches. Material also matters structurally: for furniture, footwear, and outerwear retailers, it's often the attribute that actually separates two products a title alone can't distinguish, such as a "Marlowe Sofa" sold in both linen and velvet.

How it works

The value is free text and typically a single primary material name, though multi-material items can list the dominant material or combine values with a slash the way color does. There's no fixed vocabulary Google enforces, but using the same term consistently across a catalog (always "Leather," never mixing in "Genuine Leather" or "Full-Grain Leather" for equivalent products) keeps variant grouping and search matching reliable. Material sits alongside color, pattern, size, gender, and age group as one of the attributes Google's Merchant Center guidelines list as acceptable for defining a product variant under a shared item_group_id, so it can legitimately be the sole reason two SKUs are grouped as options of the same product rather than listed as unrelated items.

Example

<item>
  <g:id>SOFA-2201-LIN</g:id>
  <title>Marlowe 3-Seat Sofa - Natural Linen</title>
  <link>https://example-shop.com/products/marlowe-sofa-linen</link>
  <g:item_group_id>SOFA-2201</g:item_group_id>
  <g:material>Linen</g:material>
  <g:price>1290.00 USD</g:price>
  <g:availability>in stock</g:availability>
</item>
<item>
  <g:id>SOFA-2201-VEL</g:id>
  <title>Marlowe 3-Seat Sofa - Emerald Velvet</title>
  <link>https://example-shop.com/products/marlowe-sofa-velvet</link>
  <g:item_group_id>SOFA-2201</g:item_group_id>
  <g:material>Velvet</g:material>
  <g:price>1390.00 USD</g:price>
  <g:availability>in stock</g:availability>
</item>

Here material is the attribute doing the grouping work instead of color or size — the two upholstery options share an item_group_id and differ in material and price, which is enough for the platform to present them as options on one listing.

Related Concepts

Material is frequently listed next to pattern and color on the same row, since all three are common ways apparel and home-goods retailers split one base product into sellable variants. Getting the values consistent across a catalog is also a normalization problem as much as a feed one — a supplier list full of "100% Cotton," "Cotton," and "Cttn" needs cleanup before the material field can do anything useful for search matching or variant grouping.