Before making any changes, understand exactly what Google is flagging, which specific issues are listed, and what fixing them requires.
Log in to your Google Merchant Center account at merchants.google.com. Look for a red or orange banner at the top of the dashboard, or go to the "Issues" or "Diagnostics" section in the left menu. Here you will find a list of specific issues Google has identified with your website. Each issue has a name (such as "Missing return policy," "Checkout not functioning," or "Website not secure") and often includes the specific URL or product that triggered it. Write down every issue listed — you must fix all of them, not just the most prominent one.
When Google Merchant Center shows "Website Needs Improvement," it means Google has reviewed your website and found that it does not meet the minimum quality and trust standards required for products to be listed on Google Shopping or shown in free product listings. Your Shopping ads and free listings are either suspended or severely limited as a result. The status is not a permanent ban — it is Google's way of saying your website needs specific improvements before they will display your products to users. Every issue listed must be resolved and a review requested before your listings can be reinstated.
Visit support.google.com/merchants/answer/6149970 to read Google's Shopping ads policies and support.google.com/merchants/answer/7538600 for the website requirements. Google's Merchant Center requirements cover: business information, return and refund policies, checkout and payment processes, website security, accurate pricing, and product information. Reading these before making changes helps you understand the full standard your website must meet, not just the individual issues currently listed in your account.
Open an incognito or private browser window (Chrome: Ctrl+Shift+N, Mac: Cmd+Shift+N) and visit your website as if you were a first-time customer who found it through a Google Shopping ad. Try to: find a product, add it to your cart, proceed through checkout, and find your returns policy and contact details. Note every step where you encounter a problem, missing information, a broken page, or anything that would make you distrust the website as a real shopper. Everything you notice as a first-time visitor is also what Google's review team will notice.
Go through the Issues or Diagnostics section of your Merchant Center account and write down every single issue listed, including: the issue name, the severity (critical, warning, or informational), the number of products affected, and any specific URLs or product IDs mentioned. Some issues are account-level (affecting all products) while others are product-level (affecting specific items). You need to fix all of them before requesting a review. Fixing only the most obvious issues while leaving others unresolved is the most common reason review requests fail on the first attempt.
A clear, complete, and easy-to-find return and refund policy is one of the most commonly flagged issues in Merchant Center. It is non-negotiable.
Your return policy must be on its own dedicated page (not buried in a general FAQ or terms document) and must clearly state: how long customers have to return a product after receiving it (for example, "30 days from delivery"), the condition products must be in to be eligible for return (for example, "unused, in original packaging"), who pays for return shipping, how long refunds take to be processed, and the refund method (original payment method, store credit, etc.). If your store does not accept returns, this must also be clearly stated. An unclear, incomplete, or missing return policy is one of the top reasons for Merchant Center suspension.
Your return policy must be easy to find without effort. It should be linked in your website footer (the section that appears at the bottom of every page), on each product page (ideally near the "Add to Cart" button), and in your order confirmation emails. Google's review team will look for this link in your footer as a first check. If they cannot find a clear link to a return policy from the homepage within seconds, the review will fail. Add a "Returns" or "Return Policy" link to your footer navigation and ensure it works correctly.
In addition to having the policy on your website, Google Merchant Center allows (and increasingly requires) you to enter your return policy directly into the Merchant Center account settings. Log in to Merchant Center, go to "Settings" (or "Shopping ads setup"), then "Shipping and returns," and add your return policy details. Include: the return window in days, whether returns are accepted, who pays for return shipping, and how refunds are issued. Having this information in Merchant Center directly alongside your website policy shows Google your policies are consistent and transparent.
Your return and refund policy must be genuine, enforceable, and comply with the consumer protection laws in every country you sell to. In the UK, the Consumer Rights Act gives customers 14 days to return most online purchases regardless of your own policy — you cannot legally offer fewer rights than this. In the EU, similar distance-selling regulations apply. In the US, while there is no federal law, false advertising laws apply. Do not write a return policy that promises refunds you do not intend to honour, as this constitutes consumer fraud and will result in Google's permanent removal of your account.
Alongside your return policy, your website must clearly state your shipping information: estimated delivery times for each country or region you ship to, the cost of shipping (or a clear statement that shipping is free), which shipping carriers you use, and whether tracking is provided. This information must appear on your website and must also be entered in Google Merchant Center under "Shipping and returns" settings. Accurate, detailed shipping information is a key trust signal that Google uses to assess whether your website is ready to list products on Shopping.
Google requires proof that your business is real and reachable. Every required piece of business information must be present and accurate.
Your website must have a Contact page that is easy to find (linked in your header or footer navigation). The page must include at minimum: an email address or contact form, and ideally also a phone number and your physical business address. Google requires that customers have a clear and accessible way to contact you if something goes wrong with an order. A website where a shopper cannot easily find how to contact the seller is considered untrustworthy and will fail the Merchant Center review. Test your contact form to confirm it actually sends messages successfully.
Google requires that your physical business address be displayed on your website. This must be a real, verifiable address where your business operates or is registered — not a P.O. box as your only address. Display it on your Contact page and in your website footer. The address you show on your website must match the business address you have registered in Google Merchant Center. A mismatch between your website address and your Merchant Center address is a common reason for review failure. If you operate from home and prefer not to show your home address, consider using a registered business address service.
Your About Us page is a key trust signal for Google's review team. It should explain: what your business sells and why, who is behind the business (founders, team, or company background), how long you have been in business, where you are based, and why customers should trust you. Do not use generic placeholder text copied from a template. Write genuine, specific content about your actual business. A website with no About page, or with clearly generic or placeholder About content, signals to Google that the website was created quickly for commercial purposes without genuine business substance behind it.
Compare your website's business name, address, phone number, and email against the information registered in your Google Merchant Center account. Every piece of information must be consistent across both. Discrepancies between your website and Merchant Center — such as a different business name, a different address, or a different contact email — are treated as trust signals by Google. Log in to Merchant Center, go to "Business information" settings, and update any fields that do not match what appears on your website.
Google requires you to verify that you actually own or control the website associated with your Merchant Center account. Go to Merchant Center → Settings → Business information → Website. If your website is not yet verified, follow Google's instructions to verify it. The easiest method for most users is to add a small piece of code (called a meta tag) to your website's header, or to use Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager if these are already set up on your site. Without website verification, your Merchant Center account cannot be activated and your products will not appear on Google Shopping.
A working, honest checkout is fundamental. Google tests your checkout process and pricing transparency as part of every review.
Open your website in an incognito browser window and complete a full test purchase: browse to a product page, add the item to your cart, proceed through every checkout step, enter test payment details (or use a test payment method if your platform provides one), and confirm that the order completes successfully and a confirmation page or email is sent. If any step in this process fails, errors, or does not work as expected, this is a critical issue that must be fixed before requesting a Merchant Center review. Google's automated systems and human reviewers test checkout functionality as a core part of the review process.
Every payment method you accept must be clearly displayed on your website — typically shown as logos of accepted payment options (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc.) on your homepage, product pages, and checkout page. Customers need to know before they start a purchase that their preferred payment method is accepted. A website that only reveals accepted payment methods at the final checkout step — after the customer has already invested time filling in their details — is considered poor practice and can be flagged in a Merchant Center review.
One of the most common causes of "Website Needs Improvement" is a price discrepancy between your product feed (the list of products submitted to Google Merchant Center) and the actual price displayed on your website. Google constantly checks these prices. If the price in your feed says £29.99 but your website shows £34.99, or vice versa, your account will be flagged. After updating prices on your website, allow time for your Merchant Center feed to update (typically 24–48 hours for automatic feeds, or you can trigger a manual re-fetch in Merchant Center). Ensure your feed uses the same currency as your website.
Google prohibits bait-and-switch pricing — showing one price on a product page and then adding unexpected fees at checkout that significantly increase the total. If you charge handling fees, packaging fees, or other fees in addition to the product price and shipping, these must either be included in the displayed product price or clearly disclosed on the product page before the customer proceeds to checkout. The price a customer sees when they click a Google Shopping listing must be the price they pay (plus any clearly disclosed taxes and shipping costs). Hidden charges discovered only at checkout will cause a Merchant Center violation.
Every price on your website must show the currency it is in. If you sell in British Pounds, show "£" before every price. If you sell in US Dollars, show "$" (though if your store serves multiple countries using "$", also write "USD" to avoid ambiguity). If your store serves multiple currencies, ensure the correct currency is shown based on the visitor's location, and that the currency used in your Merchant Center product feed matches the currency shown on your website for the same market. Currency confusion is a flagged issue in Merchant Center that triggers the Website Needs Improvement status.
Requiring every customer to create an account before completing a purchase creates significant friction and is flagged by Google as a poor user experience for Shopping listings. While you may offer account creation as an option, you must also provide a "Guest Checkout" option that allows customers to complete a purchase with only their email address, delivery address, and payment details — without creating an account. If your checkout currently requires account registration, add a guest checkout option. Most e-commerce platforms have this as a built-in setting that can be enabled without technical development work.
Every product you list on Google Shopping must have a complete, accurate, and accessible landing page on your website.
Every product in your Google Merchant Center feed has a "link" field pointing to the product's page on your website. Google visits each of these links as part of its review. If any product link returns a 404 "Page Not Found" error, a redirect to a different page, a blank page, or any other error, that product will be flagged. Go through your Merchant Center product feed and check every product link. You can use the "Products" section in Merchant Center to see which products have issues. Fix broken links by restoring the deleted pages, creating proper redirects to the correct product pages, or updating the feed with the correct current URLs.
Every product page must have a meaningful, specific description of the product. One-sentence or one-word descriptions are not sufficient. A good product description includes: what the product is and what it does, key specifications (size, material, colour, weight, compatibility, etc.), who the product is suitable for, what is included in the package, and any relevant safety or care information. Product descriptions must be written in the language of your target market and must not be simply copied from your supplier's website without modification (this can also create duplicate content issues that harm your Google search rankings).
The product images on your website must accurately show the product being sold and must match the image submitted in your Merchant Center product feed. If the image in your feed shows the product on a white background but the product page shows a different image (or no image), this creates a discrepancy that can trigger a Merchant Center flag. All product images should be high resolution (at least 800x800 pixels, ideally 1200x1200), show the product clearly from the main angle, have no excessive text overlaid on the image, and not include watermarks, promotional badges, or price tags embedded in the image.
The availability status in your Merchant Center feed (in stock, out of stock, preorder) must match what is shown on your product page. If your website shows "In Stock" but the product is actually unavailable, or if your feed says "In Stock" but the product page shows "Out of Stock," this mismatch will be flagged. Additionally, if a customer clicks a Shopping ad for a product that is then shown as unavailable on your website, this is a very poor user experience that Google penalises. Update your feed and your website simultaneously whenever product availability changes.
Products that are permanently out of stock or discontinued should be removed from your Merchant Center feed entirely (or marked as "out_of_stock" in the availability field if they will be back in stock soon). Showing Google Shopping ads for products that cannot be purchased is a poor user experience and a waste of your advertising budget. In Merchant Center, go to the Products section and filter by availability or status to identify out-of-stock items. Remove them from the feed or update their availability to "out_of_stock" so Google does not show them in Shopping results until they are available again.
Google Merchant Center requires specific product attributes in your feed depending on the product category. Required attributes for most products include: ID (a unique identifier for the product), title, description, link (product page URL), image_link, availability, price, and brand. Some categories require additional attributes: for clothing, size and colour are required; for electronics, GTIN (barcode number) is typically required; for products in competitive categories, the GTIN and brand are both required. Go through your product feed in Merchant Center and check the "Diagnostics" section to see which attributes are missing or incorrect for each product.
The product title in your Merchant Center feed is what appears in Google Shopping results. This title must accurately describe the same product that is shown on the product landing page it links to. If your feed title says "Blue Leather Handbag — Large" but the landing page shows a different colour, size, or type of handbag, this is a mismatch. Review your product titles in Merchant Center and compare them against the actual product pages they link to. Update titles in the feed or product pages as needed to ensure they are consistent and accurate for every product.
Technical and security issues are automatic disqualifiers. Fix all of them before submitting a review request.
Google requires that every website listing products through Merchant Center uses HTTPS — the secure version of the web connection — across all pages, especially checkout pages. If your website address starts with "http://" instead of "https://", your website is not secure. Contact your web hosting provider and ask them to install an SSL certificate and enable HTTPS. Most modern hosting providers offer this for free using Let's Encrypt. After enabling HTTPS, also check that all pages redirect from the old http:// addresses to the new https:// addresses, and that no "mixed content" warnings appear (where some elements on a page still load over HTTP).
Google's Safe Browsing system continuously scans websites for malware, phishing pages, and harmful code. If your website has been flagged as dangerous or has been hacked, your Merchant Center account will be suspended. Check your website using Google's free Safe Browsing tool at transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search — type in your website address and check the report. Also use a free scanner such as sucuri.net/website-scanner to check for malware. If any issues are found, contact your web hosting provider immediately and ask for assistance in cleaning and restoring your website before doing anything else.
Google requires all websites using Merchant Center to have a Privacy Policy that explains what personal data is collected from visitors and customers, how it is used, who it is shared with, and how customers can request access to or deletion of their data. Your Privacy Policy must be clearly linked from your website footer and from any page where you collect personal information (such as your checkout page, contact form, or newsletter sign-up). Use a free generator such as privacypolicygenerator.info or termly.io if you do not have one, and customise it to accurately reflect your actual data practices.
Your website must have a Terms and Conditions (or Terms of Service) document that outlines the rules of using your website and purchasing from you. This document should cover: who may use your website, the process for placing and fulfilling orders, payment terms, intellectual property rights, limitations of liability, dispute resolution, and applicable law. Link it clearly from your footer. While not every Merchant Center issue list explicitly mentions Terms and Conditions, having them is a core requirement of operating a legitimate e-commerce website and will be checked during a review.
The majority of Google Shopping traffic comes from mobile devices. Your website must be fully functional, fast-loading, and easy to use on smartphones. Test your website on an actual mobile phone (not just a desktop browser's mobile simulation). Check that: all products, images, and text display correctly on small screens, buttons and links are easy to tap, the cart and checkout work without error on mobile, product images load quickly, and no content is cut off or requires horizontal scrolling. Use Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool at pagespeed.web.dev to get a detailed report and specific recommendations for improving your website's mobile performance.
After completing all the required fixes, write a brief summary of every change you made (with dates). Then log in to Google Merchant Center, go to the "Issues" or "Needs attention" section, and look for a "Request review" button. Click it and submit your request. In some cases you will be given a text box to explain the changes you have made — use your summary to write a clear, specific description of what was fixed. After submission, Google typically takes between 3 and 10 business days to complete their review. Do not resubmit the review request multiple times — wait for the result before taking further action.
Once your account is reinstated, prevent future "Website Needs Improvement" flags by: setting up email notifications in Merchant Center so you are alerted immediately when new issues are detected (go to Settings → Notifications), checking your Merchant Center diagnostics once a week to catch issues early, updating your product feed whenever prices, availability, or product details change on your website, and testing your full checkout process monthly to confirm it continues to work correctly. Proactive monitoring takes less than 30 minutes per week and prevents the weeks of lost Shopping revenue that comes with repeated suspensions.
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Merchant Center issues can be complex and time-sensitive — every day your Shopping ads are suspended is lost revenue. Our team at UmairConsult helps e-commerce businesses fix every website requirement, clean up their product feeds, and get their listings reinstated.
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