Identical values: title, description: how to fix it
Why Merchant Center flags "Identical values: title [title], description [description]" and how to write a description that clears it.
"Identical values: title, description" means your title and description are exact duplicates, which reads as low-effort or spun data. Write a description that genuinely expands on the title with real product detail.
What triggers it
This flag isn't about the title or description being wrong on their own, it's about them being the same string (or near-identical) in both fields. Google reads that pattern as thin or auto-generated data, because a real description should always say more than a title, which is deliberately short.
It usually comes from a feed template that falls back to duplicating the title when no separate description was written, rather than from a merchant intentionally copying one into the other. If you're seeing it across a whole category, check that fallback logic before rewriting product by product.
/tools' enrichment writes an expanded, product-specific description into the supplemental layer wherever one is missing or duplicated, so title and description carry genuinely different information without you touching the source feed.
Step by step
- Find the affected products in Diagnostics. Filter Item issues to "Identical values: title, description". Check whether a feed template is copying one field into the other by default.
- Write a distinct description. Cover what the title doesn't: materials, dimensions, use case, what's in the box, care instructions. It should read as extra information, not a rewording.
- Check for a copy-field default in your feed logic. A lot of these come from a template rule like "if description is empty, copy title". Fix the rule so it doesn't fire, rather than patching each product.
- Resubmit and confirm the fields differ. Push the updated feed. This clears automatically once the two fields carry genuinely different content.