Assigning a product to a channel and having it live on the marketplace are two different things — and understanding the difference is the key to reading everything else in Channel Hub. This is the model: how a catalog product becomes a live listing, the states it moves through, and where the “is it actually listed?” number comes from.
ℹ️ The one-line version: Assigned means the product is attached to a channel. Listed means the marketplace has actually accepted it. ILLUMA only ever shows a product as listed when the marketplace itself confirms it — never because we tried.
The lifecycle
Every listing moves through the same four stages, on every channel:
- In your catalog — the product exists in your catalog with a clean SKU. It isn’t on any marketplace yet.
- Assigned — you attach the product to a channel. This creates the link (and a listing SKU) but pushes nothing on its own.
- Published — ILLUMA sends the product to the marketplace’s API. The marketplace accepts it for processing.
- Live (or not) — the marketplace reviews it and decides: serving, still under review, or rejected. ILLUMA reads that decision back and shows you the truth.
💡 When you use List All Products or List Selected, steps 2 and 3 happen in a single action — you don’t assign and then separately sync. See Listing your catalog.
Assigned is not listed
This is the distinction that trips everyone up, so it’s worth stating plainly:
- Assigning a product creates the channel link. It’s a local record. Nothing is on the marketplace yet.
- Listing (publishing) sends it to the marketplace and gets it accepted.
A product can be assigned but not listed — attached to the channel, but never successfully pushed, or pushed and later dropped by the marketplace. Those products are doing nothing for you until they’re actually listed.
⚠️ Why this matters: a dashboard that counts “assigned” as “listed” is lying to you. ILLUMA deliberately separates them so the numbers you see reflect what’s really on the marketplace, not what you intended.
Listing statuses
Once a channel has confirmed its listings, each product shows one of these states:
| Badge | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Live | Serving on the marketplace (approved) | Nothing — it’s working |
| Under review | Accepted by the marketplace, still being reviewed | Wait; review is on the marketplace’s side |
| Rejected | The marketplace disapproved it | Fix the flagged issue, then re-list |
| Removed | Was live, but the marketplace no longer holds it (e.g. it expired) | Re-list it |
| Not listed | Assigned to the channel but not on the marketplace | Run List All Products to publish it |
| Queued | Assigned, but the channel hasn’t confirmed status yet | Wait for the next status check |
ℹ️ Note: “Under review” is the marketplace’s queue, not ours. On Google Shopping especially, new products sit under review until Google finishes vetting them — see Connect Google Shopping.
Where the truth comes from
The most important thing to understand about these numbers: ILLUMA reads listing status back from the marketplace, not from its own send log.
It would be easy — and wrong — to mark a product “listed” the moment we push it. Marketplaces expire listings, disapprove them, and drop them silently. “We sent it once” is not the same as “it’s live right now.” So on a schedule, ILLUMA asks the marketplace directly what it’s actually holding, and stamps each product with that reality. The badges and counts you see are that confirmed state.
✅ This is why a product can flip from Live to Removed without you touching it: the marketplace stopped serving it, and ILLUMA told you the truth instead of leaving a stale green badge.
Reading the header counts
The Listings header summarizes your whole catalog against the channel:
8,725 of 76,967 listed · 68,242 not listed
- Listed — products the marketplace actually holds right now (Live, Under review, or Rejected all count as “on the marketplace”).
- Not listed — every other active product in your catalog. This is catalog-relative: it counts products that aren’t on the marketplace whether or not they’re assigned, so unassigning them can’t hide the gap.
- Until the channel completes its first status check, Listed shows — rather than a made-up number.
💡 Tip: If Listed and Not listed don’t add up to your catalog size, the difference is products that aren’t active — drafts and archived products are never listed.
Why a product might not be listed
The usual reasons, in rough order:
- It was assigned but never published — run List All Products.
- It was published but expired off the marketplace (common on Google after ~30 days) — re-list it.
- The marketplace rejected it — a data or policy issue to fix, shown as Rejected.
- It’s sitting in the marketplace’s review queue — nothing to fix, just wait.
For the full diagnostic checklist, see Troubleshooting listings & sync.
Next: Listing your catalog: bulk actions — the one-click ways to get products live.