Ever taken over a Google Merchant Center (GMC) account and found a supplemental feed titled something like "Updates 2019" or "Agency_Exclusions_DO_NOT_TOUCH"?

You try to open the file to see what’s inside, and you’re met with the "Google Drive Request Access" screen of death. Your predecessor didn't hand over the keys, and now you’re stuck wondering: If I delete this, will half my products get disapproved? Will my best-sellers lose their optimized titles?

In this video, I walk through how to handle "mystery" supplemental feeds without blowing up your account.

Don't Delete. Detach.

The biggest mistake you can make is hitting the delete button on a feed you don't understand. If those rules were actually keeping your account healthy, deleting them is a one-way ticket to a Merchant Center headache.

Instead of deleting, remove the connection.

• The Secret Spot: It’s actually not in the Supplemental Feed settings. You have to go into your Primary Feed, click on Attribute Rules, and look for where that supplemental source is being called.
• The "Undo" Button: By simply removing the rule that pulls from the supplemental feed, you effectively "turn it off." If everything breaks, you just add the source back into the rule, and you're back where you started.

How to "Steal" Your Data Back

If you can't open the Google Sheet, how do you know what's in it?

1. Download the File: Even if you don't have permission to the Sheet, GMC usually lets you download the last processed file directly from the Supplemental Feed's "Processing" tab.
2. Audit the Mess: Once you have that CSV/TSV, you can finally see the "Why." Are they excluding products? Changing IDs? Fixing broken URLs?
3. Clone and Conquer: Take that data, upload it into a new supplemental feed that you own (I like to label mine "ZATO_Exclusions" or something equally clear), and point your Attribute Rules there.

The PPCKirk Rule of Thumb

I’ll say it until I’m blue in the face: Edit the original feed source whenever possible. Supplemental feeds are great for quick fixes or temporary tests, but they shouldn't be a permanent "band-aid" for a messy backend.

Clean data at the source leads to fewer "mysteries" down the road when the next person (or you, three years from now) has to figure out what happened.

Watch the full walkthrough here: Accessing Mystery Supplemental Feeds

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