The product_highlight attribute: a practical guide for WooCommerce stores
Feedlift · July 21, 2026
This is the practical companion to Google's own attribute documentation — what the rules are, and what they mean for a WooCommerce feed.
The hard rules
- Length: 1–150 characters per highlight. Aim for 30–120; ultra-short fragments waste the slot. - Count: minimum 2, recommended 4–6, up to 10. One highlight is worse than none — Google drops the attribute with a "too few values" warning. - Content: benefit-focused fragments grounded in the product. No prices or percentages, no promotions or shipping offers, no URLs, no competitor comparisons, no ALL-CAPS. - Truthfulness: highlights must reflect the actual product. Merchant Center's misrepresentation policy sits above every attribute rule — never let a generator invent materials, certifications or specs.
Delivery: feed or API only
There is no schema.org equivalent — the attribute travels in your product feed. In XML feeds, repeat <g:product_highlight> per value. In spreadsheet feeds, prefer TSV over CSV: highlight text loves commas, and comma-separated multi-value fields need careful quoting (values containing commas or colons wrapped in straight quotes, inner quotes doubled). If your feed tool asks for one column, use a pre-escaped CSV field rather than hand-quoting.
Mapping in WooCommerce
If you run AdTribes Product Feed PRO/Elite, map a custom field to product_highlight. Other feed plugins can read any product meta key. Feedlift writes both formats for you: google_shopping_highlights (one per line) and google_shopping_highlights_csv (pre-escaped) — plus a fl_get_highlights() template helper for custom feeds.
Keeping it maintained
Highlights go stale when products change. Two habits help: regenerate only what changed (content-hash comparison, not blanket re-runs), and treat unchanged products as free — which is exactly how Feedlift's cache works. Set it up once, and the attribute stops being a project and becomes plumbing.