Fix Google
Merchant Center
Policy Violation

Log in to your Google Merchant Center account at merchants.google.com. Look for any banners, alerts, or warning icons at the top of the dashboard. Click on each alert to read the full message. Google will have flagged a specific policy violation — it may say your account has been suspended, that specific products have been disapproved, or that your website or business practices do not meet Merchant Center requirements. Note down every alert, every affected product group, and the specific policy names mentioned. You need this information to work through every step on this checklist.

In your Merchant Center account, click on Products in the left menu, then click Diagnostics. This section shows you a complete breakdown of all issues affecting your account and your products, organised by severity — Account, Feed, and Item level issues. Read through every issue listed. Some may be warnings that have not yet caused disapproval. Others will be active violations causing products to be disapproved right now. Take a screenshot of the full Diagnostics page and make a list of every issue you see, as you need to fix all of them, not just the most prominent one.

Merchant Center violations come in two forms. An account-level suspension means your entire Merchant Center account has been suspended and none of your products can appear in Google Shopping results or Shopping ads. A product-level disapproval means specific products have been removed from Shopping while the rest of your account continues to operate. Account-level suspensions are more serious and take longer to resolve because they require a full account review. Product-level disapprovals can often be fixed by correcting the affected product data. Knowing which type you have determines how urgently you need to act and what resolution path to take.

Every Merchant Center violation notice will reference a specific policy. Click through to the policy page linked in the notice — or search for it at support.google.com/merchants — and read it in full. Common policies that generate these violations include the Shopping Ads policies on product data quality, prohibited products, and misrepresentation, as well as the Merchant Center programme policies on website requirements, return policies, and pricing transparency. Reading the exact policy that applies to your situation ensures you fix the right things and do not miss any requirement.

Google sends notifications about Merchant Center violations to the email address associated with your Google account. Check the inbox connected to your Merchant Center account for any messages from Google that may contain additional context, specific examples of what triggered the violation, or requests for information. Some account-level suspensions come with a detailed explanation of what was found during Google's review, which gives you specific guidance on exactly what to fix. Keep all of these messages for reference throughout the resolution process.

If your account has been suspended, do not attempt to set up a new Merchant Center account to work around the suspension. Google links accounts based on your website URL, your business name, your payment details, your Google account, and your device and IP address history. Creating a new account while a previous one is suspended is a circumvention violation that will result in the new account being suspended immediately as well, and it significantly reduces your chances of ever having the original account reinstated. Work through the proper resolution process on the suspended account.

Google requires every Merchant Center account to have a clear and accessible return and refund policy on the website. This policy must state: how customers can return a product, how many days they have to initiate a return, who pays for return shipping, how long refunds take to be processed, what condition items must be in to qualify for return, and whether any products are excluded from your return policy. The policy must be easy to find — link to it from your website footer, from your checkout page, and from your product pages where relevant. It must apply to the same products you are selling through Google Shopping.

Your website must have a Terms and Conditions or Terms of Service page that governs how customers interact with your store. This page should cover: who you are as a business, what products or services you offer, the terms of purchase, payment terms, delivery terms, limitations of liability, dispute resolution procedures, and any other conditions that apply to using your website or buying from you. The Terms and Conditions must be accessible from your website footer on every page. Generic or template terms that do not accurately reflect your actual business practices are not sufficient — the terms must match how you actually operate.

A Privacy Policy is required by both Google Merchant Center and by data protection laws in most countries. Your Privacy Policy must explain: what personal data you collect from visitors and customers, why you collect it, how you use it, who you share it with including Google and any advertising platforms, how long you keep it, and how customers can request their data be deleted. The policy must be accessible from the footer of every page on your website. If you use Google Ads remarketing, Google Analytics, or any other advertising or tracking technology, these must all be disclosed in the Privacy Policy with a plain-language explanation of what each one does.

Your website must have a Contact Us page that makes it easy for customers to reach you. This page must include at minimum: your full legal business name, a working email address that you monitor regularly, a working phone number, and a physical address. If you only have a virtual office address or a registered office address and not a trading address, this must still be accurate and contactable. A contact form alone is not sufficient — you must provide direct contact information. The Contact page must be linked from your website navigation or footer and must be accessible from all pages on your site.

Google's review team checks your About Us page as part of assessing whether your website represents a legitimate and trustworthy business. Your About Us page must clearly explain who your business is, what you sell, how long you have been in business, and why customers should trust you. A page that says only We are passionate about providing great products is not sufficient. Include specific information about your business history, your products or categories, your team if appropriate, your location, and any relevant credentials or industry memberships. This page is often one of the first things a Google reviewer looks at when assessing a new or suspended account.

Google requires that the checkout process on your website is fully functional and accessible to any user, without requiring login to view product prices or add items to cart. Test your entire checkout process from a fresh incognito browser window: can you view product pages without logging in? Can you see prices without logging in? Can you add a product to the cart? Can you proceed to checkout? Does the checkout process work on mobile? If any part of the checkout is broken, requires login to proceed, or shows errors, fix these issues before submitting any appeal. Google reviews your checkout process as part of assessing website compliance.

Google requires specific attributes for every product in your Shopping feed. The mandatory attributes for most products are: id, title, description, link, image link, price, availability, and condition. For certain product categories, additional required attributes apply — for example, apparel products require colour, size, gender, and age group; products with variants require item group id; and products with brand identifiers require either gtin, mpn, or brand. Go to your Merchant Center Diagnostics and look for any Missing required attribute errors. Fix every one of them before resubmitting your feed.

Product titles in Google Shopping must accurately describe the item being sold. They must not be vague or generic, must not use all-caps or excessive punctuation, must not include promotional language such as free shipping or best price, and must not include phrases that are unrelated to the product. A good title follows the format: Brand plus Product type plus Key attributes. For example: Nike Air Max 270 Running Shoes Mens Size 10 Black. Review every product title in your feed and update any that are inaccurate, promotional, or missing key descriptive details. Titles must match the title visible on the product page on your website.

The price shown in your Google Shopping feed must exactly match the price displayed on the corresponding product page on your website, in the same currency, including any taxes that are required to be shown by law in your country. If the price on your website has changed and the feed has not been updated, or if your feed shows a price that differs from what appears on the product page, this will cause disapproval. Go through your products and verify that the price in your feed matches the price on each product page exactly. If you use dynamic pricing or sales pricing, ensure your feed is updating in real time or at least daily to reflect current prices.

The availability status in your feed must match the availability status shown on your product page. If your feed shows in stock but the product page says Out of stock or the product is not available to purchase, this is a mismatch violation. Similarly, if a product is available on your site but your feed shows out of stock, you are losing sales unnecessarily. Review your feed availability settings and your product pages to ensure they match. If you have an automatic feed or use a plugin to generate your feed, check whether it is correctly syncing availability data in real time or near real time.

Google requires products that have been assigned a GTIN — Global Trade Item Number, which is the barcode number on the product — to include that GTIN in the feed. GTINs include EAN codes, UPC codes, ISBN numbers for books, and JAN codes for Japanese products. If your products have GTINs and you are not submitting them, or if you are submitting incorrect GTINs, your products will be disapproved. Check every product to confirm whether it has a GTIN. If it does, include it accurately in the feed. If your product does not have a GTIN because it is a custom or handmade item, set the identifier exists attribute to false in your feed to indicate this correctly.

Product images in your Shopping feed must meet specific requirements. Images must be at least 100 by 100 pixels for non-apparel products and at least 250 by 250 pixels for apparel products. They must not contain promotional text, watermarks, or borders. They must show the product clearly against a neutral background where possible. They must be the actual product being sold, not a placeholder or a generic category image. Images must be accessible via a publicly accessible URL — they cannot be behind a login or a restricted server. Check every product image in your feed and on your product pages and fix any that do not meet these requirements.

Product descriptions in your feed must accurately describe the product. They must not contain promotional language, competitor mentions, or irrelevant keywords. They must match or be consistent with the description shown on the product page on your website. Descriptions that consist only of keywords rather than natural language describing the product will cause disapproval. Review your product descriptions and rewrite any that are keyword-stuffed, inaccurate, misleading, or significantly different from what appears on the product page. Descriptions should be between 500 and 1000 characters for best results.

Google prohibits certain products from being advertised through Shopping entirely. These include: counterfeit products, dangerous products such as weapons and explosives, tobacco products, drugs and drug paraphernalia, sexually explicit products, products that facilitate illegal activity, and certain financial products. Go to support.google.com/merchants/answer/6149970 and read the prohibited products list in full. If any products in your feed fall into these categories, they must be removed from your feed entirely. Do not attempt to disguise or reframe prohibited products with different titles or descriptions — Google's review systems are sophisticated and this will result in account suspension.

Restricted products are categories that Google allows under specific conditions, targeting restrictions, or with additional documentation. Restricted categories include: alcohol, gambling-related products, healthcare products, medicines, adult products, financial services, and political content. If you sell products in any restricted category, review the specific requirements for that category at support.google.com/merchants/answer/6150006. You may need to apply for access to sell in that category, provide additional documentation, or add specific targeting restrictions to your campaigns. Selling restricted products without meeting the category requirements is a suspension cause.

Selling counterfeit products — items that copy the brand, trademark, or design of genuine branded goods without authorisation — is one of the most severe Merchant Center violations. Google has sophisticated systems to detect counterfeit products and takes immediate action when they are found, including permanent account suspension. If your store sells any product that imitates a genuine branded product — whether or not it is explicitly marketed as a replica or fake — remove it from your website and your feed immediately. Do not attempt to relist counterfeit products under different names. Once detected, counterfeit violations are very difficult to appeal.

Health and wellness products — including supplements, skincare products, and devices that claim health benefits — are subject to strict accuracy requirements. Product titles, descriptions, and landing pages must not make medical claims that cannot be substantiated, must not imply the product can treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition unless the product is authorised by the relevant medical authority in your country, and must not use misleading before-and-after imagery. Review all health and wellness products in your feed and on your website and remove any claims that cannot be supported by scientific evidence or regulatory approval.

Products that are restricted to adults — such as alcohol, adult content, or certain healthcare products — must have appropriate age restrictions in place on both your website and in your Shopping campaigns. On your website, if your products are age-restricted, you must have an age verification mechanism. In your Merchant Center feed, adult products must have the adult attribute set to true. In your Google Ads campaigns, adult content campaigns must have age targeting set to exclude users under 18. Check all age-restricted products across your feed, website, and campaigns to ensure the appropriate restrictions are in place at every level.

If you sell branded products, you must be able to demonstrate that they are genuine and that you have the right to sell them. This means you must source products from authorised distributors or directly from the manufacturer. If Google receives a complaint from a brand owner alleging that you are selling counterfeit or unauthorised products, your account can be suspended while the matter is investigated. Keep documentation of your supply chain and your authorisation to sell branded goods. If you are an authorised retailer, obtain a letter of authorisation from the brand owner and keep it ready to provide if requested.

Your website must clearly display your true business name — the legal name under which you trade. It must not misrepresent who you are, claim to be a brand you are not, or use a name that could mislead customers into thinking they are dealing with a different, more well-known company. Check your website header, footer, About page, and all correspondence templates to confirm your business name is displayed accurately. Also confirm that the business name in your Merchant Center account matches the name displayed on your website exactly.

Your product prices must be transparent and accurate. You must not advertise a price in your feed that excludes mandatory additional charges — such as unavoidable handling fees, compulsory service charges, or required add-ons — that are added at checkout. You must not display crossed-out original prices unless the product was genuinely sold at that higher price for a significant period. You must not create artificial price urgency with fake countdown timers or false sale end dates. Review your checkout process and confirm that the total price a customer pays matches what is shown in your feed and on your product pages as closely as possible.

Merchant Center prohibits misleading promotional practices on landing pages. This includes: countdown timers that reset when they expire, claims that only a limited number of items are available when stock is not actually limited, free shipping claims when shipping costs are added later in checkout, claims of being the official retailer of a brand when you are not, and use of a brand's logo or trademark in a way that implies official affiliation. Review all product pages linked from your Shopping feed and remove any element that could mislead customers about the nature, availability, or price of the product.

Your shipping settings in Merchant Center must match the shipping information displayed on your website. If your website says free shipping on all orders but your Merchant Center shipping settings charge for delivery, this is a misrepresentation violation. If you offer free shipping above a certain order value, this threshold must be accurately reflected in both your website and your Merchant Center shipping settings. Go to Shipping settings in your Merchant Center account and verify that every shipping option configured there matches exactly what is communicated to customers on your website.

Cloaking — showing different content to Google's review systems than to regular human visitors — is one of the most serious Merchant Center violations and results in immediate and often permanent account suspension. Check that every product page linked from your feed shows the same content in an incognito browser as it would show to any other visitor. If you have any server-side rules that serve different content based on the visitor's user agent, referrer, or IP address, these must be removed. All visitors, including Google's crawlers, must see the same product information, the same prices, and the same availability status.

Displaying fabricated customer reviews or testimonials — whether written by yourself, generated by AI without disclosure, or purchased from a review farm — is a misrepresentation violation. All reviews and testimonials on your website must be genuine feedback from real customers. If you display star ratings or review counts, these must reflect actual customer reviews. If you use a third-party review platform, check that the platform's data is displaying correctly and that you have not manually altered the ratings. Remove any review or testimonial that is not from a genuine customer who had a real experience with your business.

In your Merchant Center account, go to Products then Feeds, and check the status of each feed. Look for any feeds showing errors, warnings, or processing failures. Check that the feed format — whether it is a Google Sheets feed, an XML feed, a CSV feed, or a Content API feed — is correctly structured according to Google's specifications. Also check the fetch schedule — if your feed is supposed to be fetched daily but is showing a last fetch date of several days ago, there may be a connectivity or access issue preventing Google from downloading your feed. Fix any feed format errors before resubmitting.

Every product URL and image URL in your feed must be publicly accessible without requiring any login or authentication. Test each product URL by opening it in an incognito browser window on a device that is not connected to your office or home network. If the URL redirects through multiple pages before reaching the product, if it shows a login page, if it returns a 404 error, or if it shows a maintenance page, it will fail Google's crawl check. Similarly, test every image URL to ensure the image loads correctly without authentication. Fix all broken or restricted URLs before resubmitting your feed.

If you use a file-based feed — such as an XML or CSV file hosted on your server that Google fetches on a schedule — check in Merchant Center whether Google is able to successfully fetch the file. Go to Products, then Feeds, and click on the feed in question to see the fetch history. If Google is reporting a fetch error, it means it cannot download your feed file. Common causes include: the file URL has changed, the server requires authentication to download the file, the server is blocking Google's crawler user agent, or the file has grown too large for the fetch time limit. Fix the underlying access issue and manually trigger a re-fetch to confirm it succeeds.

For your Shopping products to appear in paid Shopping ads, your Merchant Center account must be linked to your Google Ads account. Go to Settings in Merchant Center, then Linked accounts, and confirm that your Google Ads account is shown as linked. If there is no link, go to your Google Ads account, click Tools and Settings, then Linked accounts, and follow the process to link your Merchant Center account. If the link exists but Shopping campaigns are not serving, check that the link is approved on both sides — it must be accepted in both Merchant Center and Google Ads for it to be active.

A Merchant Center account that has not completed all required setup steps will have products disapproved or the account put into a limited state. Go to the Growth section in Merchant Center and look for the Manage programmes option. Check that you have completed: website claiming and verification, Merchant Center programme acceptance, shipping settings configuration, return policy configuration, and any country-specific requirements for the markets you are targeting. Also check that your business information is complete — legal business name, address, customer service email, and phone number. Incomplete setup is a very common cause of account-level disapproval.

Before any products can be shown in Google Shopping, you must prove to Google that you own or have authorised access to the website linked to your Merchant Center account. In Merchant Center, go to Business information, then Website, and check whether your website is claimed and verified. If it shows as unverified or unclaimed, you need to complete the verification process. This is usually done by adding an HTML tag to your website homepage, uploading an HTML file to your server, or using Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager if they are already installed on your site. Without website verification, no products can be approved.

Open an incognito browser window and visit your website as a first-time customer would experience it. Check that: your Return Policy, Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions, Contact page, and About page are all accessible from the footer; your checkout process works from start to finish without errors; product prices match what is shown in your feed; product availability is accurate; all images load correctly; no pop-ups block the main content; and the site works on mobile. Also check that every product URL listed in your feed opens to the correct product page without redirects, errors, or login requirements. Fix any remaining issues before submitting your appeal.

After fixing your product data and website issues, manually re-submit your product feed so Google can process the updated data. In Merchant Center, go to Products, then Feeds, find your feed, and click the refresh or fetch now button. Wait for the feed to be fully processed — this can take anywhere from a few hours to 24 hours depending on the size of your feed. After processing is complete, return to the Diagnostics section and confirm that the number of disapproved products has decreased and that the specific errors you fixed are no longer showing. Do not submit your appeal until the feed has been processed and you have confirmed the fixes are reflected in Diagnostics.

For account-level suspensions, you need to request a manual review from Google. In your Merchant Center account, look for the appeal or request review option — this is usually shown in the suspension banner at the top of your account. Click it and complete the appeal form. In the form, provide a clear and specific summary of every change you made, with dates. For example: 1. Added Return Policy page to website footer on the date. 2. Corrected price mismatch for 47 products in feed on the date. 3. Removed 3 products found to be in a prohibited category on the date. 4. Completed website verification in Merchant Center on the date. Be factual and specific — generic appeals are less likely to succeed.

After submitting your Merchant Center appeal, wait for Google to respond before taking any further action. Account-level reviews typically take between 3 and 14 business days. Product-level appeals are usually faster. Do not submit the appeal multiple times or contact Google support repeatedly during this period — multiple submissions do not speed up the review and can cause your case to be reset or deprioritised. If you have not received any response after 14 business days, you can contact Merchant Center support once to ask for a status update, providing your appeal reference number.

One of the most effective ways to prevent future Merchant Center violations is to ensure your product feed is always accurate and up to date. Set up an automated daily feed fetch so Google always has the most current product data. If you use an e-commerce platform like Shopify, WooCommerce, or Magento, install the official Google channel plugin to keep your feed in sync automatically. Set up email alerts in Merchant Center under Account then Notifications to receive immediate notification of any new disapprovals or feed errors. Catching issues early prevents them from escalating into account-level suspensions.

Set a recurring monthly reminder to log in to Merchant Center and review the Diagnostics section in full. During each monthly audit: check the number of approved versus disapproved products; look for any new item-level or feed-level warnings that have appeared; verify that your shipping settings still match your website; check that your return policy on the website matches the return policy settings in Merchant Center; and confirm that your feed is fetching successfully on schedule. Catching issues proactively before Google flags them prevents campaign disruption and protects your Shopping performance.

Merchant Center account suspensions can be difficult to resolve, particularly for accounts that have received multiple violations, accounts in restricted product categories, or accounts where the suspension reason was not clearly explained. If your first appeal is rejected, read the rejection response carefully to understand what Google still objects to. Make further targeted changes and resubmit with a new, detailed evidence list. If you cannot identify what remains non-compliant, or if your account faces a permanent suspension, working with a Google Shopping specialist who has experience resolving Merchant Center policy violations is strongly recommended. These situations require careful, expert handling to avoid permanent loss of your account.