EAN
EAN is a 13-digit GS1 article number that uniquely identifies a product and is encoded in the barcode on retail goods.
What is EAN?
EAN originally stood for European Article Number and is now officially called the International Article Number. It is an article number administered by GS1 that uniquely identifies a specific product across stores and countries. The most common variant, EAN-13, has 13 digits where the last is a check digit, while EAN-8 is a short 8-digit version for physically small goods. An EAN is a type of GTIN — an EAN-13 is equivalent to a GTIN-13.
Why does EAN matter?
EAN lets you reference the same product across suppliers, inventory, point-of-sale, and marketplaces without confusion. The leading digits are a GS1 company prefix that shows where the number was registered — not the country of manufacture. For online stores the number is especially important in Google Shopping: Google Merchant Center uses GTIN/EAN to match your products to the right items, which improves ad eligibility and performance.
Common use cases
- Filling in product data so items can sell on Google Shopping, Pricerunner, and marketplaces like Amazon.
- Scanning barcodes for stock counts, goods receipt, and picking.
- Matching against a supplier catalog when purchasing and dropshipping.
- Separating the EAN (global product number) from your internal SKU, which you control yourself.
- Enriching your product feed with correct identifiers.
Shopify perspective
In Shopify, the EAN is stored on the individual variant in the field labeled “Barcode (ISBN, UPC, GTIN, etc.)”, exposed as barcode in the Admin API. Note that the field is not automatically pushed everywhere: the Google & YouTube channel usually maps barcode to GTIN, but always confirm the field is filled per variant and not only at the product level. Missing or incorrect EANs are a frequent cause of disapproved products in Merchant Center.