Google has unique policies for Google Shopping that are stricter than its general advertising policies. If Google thinks you’ve violated any of them, it can suspend your Merchant Center.

That cuts off access to Google Shopping, Local Inventory Ads, product feeds in Performance Max and dynamic remarketing, and free listings for products. That means losing your highest-ROI channel overnight.

Here’s how Google’s system works — and what you can do to fix suspensions and get back online.

Case study: How we reinstated a suspended Merchant Center

A UK-based ecommerce retailer came to us after their Google Merchant Center account was suspended for “Misrepresentation,” cutting off their Shopping ads entirely.

Like many legitimate merchants, they were blindsided. Their store was real, their products were accurate, and they had no idea what Google’s specific objection was.

We started with a full compliance audit of their website and Merchant Center account, working through every area Google scrutinizes.

What we found wasn’t one big violation. It was a long list of smaller gaps that, in combination, signaled untrustworthiness to Google’s systems.

The website’s Contact Us page lacked a physical address, a domain-based email address, and clear customer service hours, all of which Google expects from a legitimate business.

Their policy pages (shipping, returns, refunds, and payment) either didn’t exist or lacked the specific detail Google looks for. Missing elements included cancellation windows, defective item procedures, and accepted payment methods.

Beyond policies, their site lacked an order tracking feature and a cookie consent mechanism (required under UK law). A bot blocker was preventing Google’s automated crawlers from crawling the site.

Inside Google Merchant Center itself, Shopify’s automatic shipping sync was creating conflicting data. 

We documented every required change in detail and handed the client a clear, prioritized action list. Once they made all the changes, we requested a review from Google.

Google approved the appeal and reinstated the account.

Key takeaway: Google evaluates the totality of your website and feed, not just individual policy pages. A successful reinstatement almost always requires fixing multiple issues across your site before submitting an appeal.

Dig deeper: Google Ads account suspensions: What advertisers need to know

Step 1: Identify the type of suspension

Google will email you the policy they believe you’ve violated.

You can also find this information on the Needs attention tab in your Merchant Center.

Read the suspension notice carefully because Google’s description, vague as it often is, will be your starting point for the following audit steps.

Misrepresentation

Misrepresentation is the most common policy we see cited for Google Merchant Center suspensions.

This policy covers a wide range of problems, from inaccurate information in Merchant Center, to missing policy pages on your website, to bad reviews about your business on third-party websites.

Follow the steps outlined in this guide to focus on improving four key areas:

• Your Merchant Center settings.
• Your product feed.
• Your website.
• Your online reputation.

Counterfeit products

You’re most likely to see this suspension reason if you’re reselling products from other brands (such as Pokémon cards, Prada bags, or Nike sneakers).

Helpful actions to take:

• Say on your website whether you have a relationship with the manufacturer.
  • Are you an authorized reseller?
  • Do you purchase directly from the manufacturer?
  • Do you purchase from third parties?
• Explain your authentication process.
• Don’t list prices significantly lower than the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP).

Website needs improvement

Rather than citing a specific policy violation, Google is flagging that your website doesn’t appear sufficiently complete or functional.

Use incognito mode and multiple devices to check your website for:

• Placeholder images or text.
• Missing policy pages.
• Problems adding products to cart or finishing the checkout process.

Unsupported shopping content

Google has a list of things that can be advertised via “regular” Google ads, but not via Google Shopping.

Services as a whole may not be advertised, which is why you won’t see ads for lawyers, doctors, or consultants on Google Shopping.

It gets tricky when services are bundled with products (you can advertise car tires, but you can’t advertise the labor to replace the tires on your car).

Google tends to aggressively flag things as services, or unsupported digital goods, that don’t actually fall within those policies.

What to do:

• Separate services from physical products on your website.
• Add explanation text to product pages clearly stating that what you’re selling is a physical good and not a service.
• Avoid keywords like ebook and PDF that could trigger Google to think you’re selling disallowed digital goods.

Healthcare and medicines

Google restricts advertising healthcare-related products. The policies are country-specific, so be sure to carefully read the policy for the country, or countries, you’re targeting.

To sell prescription and over-the-counter drugs in the U.S., advertisers must undergo third-party certification through a company such as LegitScript and a separate certification process with Google.

Google explicitly lists pharmaceuticals and supplements that aren’t allowed to be advertised. Unfortunately, this list is not comprehensive. We’ve had cases where Google support informed us that products not on this list are not allowed to be advertised.

What to do:

• Get certified (if you meet the certification requirements).
• Avoid making claims about the benefits of what you sell that can’t be directly verified by linking to studies from your product pages.
• Add appropriate disclaimers to your product pages and customer testimonials.

Dig deeper: A guide to Google Ads for regulated and sensitive categories

DMCA violation

If someone reports your website for content that violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Google will suspend your Merchant Center. These reports are filed in the Lumen database, where you can see what content has been flagged and when the report was made.

What to do:

• If you’re violating copyright, remove the content from your website.
• If you’re not violating copyright, document how this content is original to your website and why you believe the report was wrong.
• After requesting a review of your suspension, you will probably have to engage in back-and-forth with Google support to argue why you should be allowed back on their platform.

Step 2: Audit your Merchant Center settings

Merchant Center settings are misconfigured in almost every suspension case we work on.

Go through every single page in your Merchant Center to make sure you’ve entered as much information as possible and that everything you’ve entered is accurate and matches what’s on your website.

Business info

• Your store name must comply with Google’s policies.
• Your physical address needs to be exactly right (no misplaced words or numbers) and should match the physical address on your website’s Contact page.
• You should have accurate contact information, and a link to your Contact page, and relevant social media profiles.

Shipping and returns

• Every product in your feed needs to be covered by at least one shipping rule and a return policy.
• The shipping methods, handling and shipping times, cost structure, return timeline, refund process, exceptions, and restocking fees need to exactly match the information on the Shipping and Returns policy pages on your website.

Step 3: Audit your product feed data quality

Think of your product feed as your ads. Just as saying inaccurate things in your ads can lead to disapprovals, providing inaccurate or insufficient product data to Google can result in item disapprovals and account suspensions.

Item disapprovals

In addition to account-level suspensions, Google often disapproves specific products for product-level violations.

There are many things that can cause item disapprovals. Top issues include:

• Links or images that don’t load.
• Mismatches between pricing or availability.
• Missing weight or shipping information.
• Invalid GTINs.
• Unsupported product categories like weapons, digital goods, or services.

These problems don’t necessarily cause account suspensions, but you should fix as many as possible before requesting a review. You want Google to see you as committed to sending high-quality data and not violating any of their policies.

Wrong prices and URLs

The price in your product feed must match the price shown when someone lands on that product’s page. Two common mistakes:

• Using a parent product URL with a product variant’s price, which causes a mismatch between the price in the ad and the price on the product page.
• Putting a sale price in the feed that is not on the product page, or vice versa.

GTINs

Global Trade Identification Numbers (GTINs) are the numbers, such as UPCs and ISBNs, that manufacturers assign to their products.

• If your products don’t have GTINs, you can set the value of the field identifier_exists in your feed to FALSE.
• If your products have GTINs and you have access to them, send those numbers to Google in your feed.

You don’t have to send a GTIN, but if you do, it must be accurate.

We’ve seen cases where advertisers created fake GTINs, thinking it would help their products perform better. Instead, Google suspended the entire account.

Copied product photos and descriptions

Resellers who copy product images and descriptions from manufacturers may run into problems, especially if you don’t provide the product GTINs in the feed.

Ideally, you should take your own product images and write your own product descriptions, so that everything on your website is original.

Dig deeper: Google Ads’ three-strikes system: Managing warnings, strikes, and suspension

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Step 4: Audit your website

Even if your Merchant Center settings and product feed are clean, your website itself can be the reason you’re suspended.

Crawl issues

Google will suspend your account if they’re not able to crawl your website.

For example, we’ve seen clients block visits from countries from which a high volume of spam traffic was originating. This accidentally blocked Google’s robots from accessing the website and caused a suspension.

We’ve also seen mistakes with the robots.txt file accidentally excluding Google’s bots from accessing key pages, which looks to Google like you’re trying to hide something.

Missing information

You need clear and distinct policy pages on your website, including:

• Privacy.
• Shipping.
• Refund and return.
• Terms of service.
• Order tracking.
• Payment.

You also need accurate contact information on your Contact page and a comprehensive About page.

Inaccurate or inconsistent information

Any claims you make on your website must be true. For example, if you say you offer free shipping on orders over $25, then you have to actually give free shipping when a cart value is greater than $25.

We often see inconsistencies on websites, such as:

• Different return windows mentioned on the Return policy page than in the Return policy pop-up on the Shopify checkout page.
• Old phone numbers that no longer work and haven’t been removed.
• Template language referencing other businesses or products you don’t sell that you never removed from policy pages.

Badges and awards

Adding badges and awards (such as the Better Business Bureau badge and Trustpilot review widgets) to your website is a way to demonstrate credibility.

When you add badges, awards, or “As seen on” logos to your website, make sure to hyperlink them to supporting pages, or else Google may think you’re making unsupported claims.

Step 5: Audit your digital footprint

Google wants only trusted businesses to run Google Shopping ads, so they look beyond your website and Merchant Center at your digital footprint as a whole.

Reviews

If you don’t have reviews on third-party websites like Trustpilot and BBB, or worse, if there are many negative reviews about your business, Google will view you with more suspicion.

Make a focused effort to ask your customers for reviews and respond professionally to all reviews (positive or negative), so that Google sees you’re an active, engaged business.

Social media

Google expects websites to have profiles on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

There is even a place in your Merchant Center where you can directly link to your social profiles.

It can be helpful to claim profiles for your business and make sure that your business info in those profiles (domain, phone number, physical and email addresses) match what’s on your website.

Authorized resellers

If you’re an authorized reseller for another brand, establish as much of a connection to that brand online as possible. For example:

• Ask the brand to link to your website from their social media profiles and website.
• Post any information you’re legally allowed to share about your contract on your website so that Google sees you’re being transparent.
• Create an authentication guide that details how you authenticate the products you sell.

Step 6: Request a review

After you have followed steps 1-5 to identify and fix as many potential problems as possible, you are ready to ask Google to review your suspension.

To request a review:

• Log in to your Google Merchant Center account.
• Click Products & store.
• Click Products.
• Click Needs attention.
• In the box that says “Suspended account for policy violation,” click Fix.
• Click the button labeled “I disagree with the issue.”

Google sometimes makes the button unclickable until you go through identity verification, and in some cases, it also requires a video verification process.

Google doesn’t let you write any context when you request a review. Clicking the button is your only option.

Google limits how many reviews you may request. The limit varies per account, but often is three or less. Once you’ve reached that limit, Google will tell you that it will no longer accept additional review requests, and the button will no longer be clickable.

Google will not review your appeal unless there is at least one product in your Merchant Center.

What if I’m suspended for multiple things?

Google sometimes flags Merchant Centers with multiple policy violations at the same time. Fix everything possible on your website and in your account, and then appeal the suspensions one at a time.

Start with the suspension that looks the most comprehensive. For example, misrepresentation is a more “egregious” suspension in Google’s eyes than sale of service, so start by appealing the former.

If one policy issue is a suspension and another is a warning (suspended for misrepresentation and warned for website needs improvement), appeal the warning first.

Common questions about Google Merchant Center suspensions

Why is my Google Merchant Center suspended?

Google will tell you what policy it believes you’ve violated via email, and in a notification in the “Needs Attention” tab in your Merchant Center.

These policies are usually quite broad, and narrowing down exactly why you were suspended can be difficult, which is why it’s vital that you fix as many potential problems as possible before appealing your suspension.

How long does a Google Merchant Center suspension last?

In most cases, it lasts forever unless you successfully appeal the suspension.

That said, we’ve seen cases where Google re-crawled a website after changes were made and automatically reinstated an account prior to the advertiser requesting a review (but don’t count on this happening).

Can Google Merchant Center support help me?

Sometimes, if you know how to ask the right questions, Google Merchant Center support will provide some ideas about what went wrong, or will point to specific data issues with your products.

What happens if Google rejects my appeal?

Typically, Google will put your Merchant Center into a cool-down period during which you can’t request another review.

The first cool-down period is usually seven days, and the timeline gets longer with subsequent rejections.

How many times can I appeal a Google Merchant Center suspension?

Google typically limits appeals to between one and three attempts, though exceptions exist.

Why does Google keep suspending my Merchant Center account?

It’s not uncommon for Google to accept an appeal of a Merchant Center suspension and then suspend that account again for the same policy.

This could be due to Google’s automated systems re-flagging you for something that its manual reviewers decided was not a violation.

It could also be because Google is unfortunately inconsistent with how it flags policy violations and enforces its policies.

Can I ask customers to write reviews of my business online?

You can. If you’re sending product reviews to Merchant Center, you must disclose to Google if you incentivize customers to leave reviews.

Dig deeper: Dealing with Google Ads frustrations: Poor support, suspensions, rising costs

Preventing Google Merchant Center suspensions

All of the steps outlined in this guide to fix suspensions are things you should proactively do to help prevent suspensions from happening.

Doing these things before you’re suspended can potentially save you tremendous time, frustration, and opportunity cost.

Here are a few more ideas to help stop suspensions:

• Check your website weekly via incognito mode on mobile and desktop devices to make sure your website functions properly.
• Get a real physical business address, and feature that address on your Contact page and in your website footer.
• Regularly ask your clients to write reviews about you, and respond professionally to every single review.
• Consistently read the policies on your website to make sure they are still accurate, and update them immediately if you change your processes.
• Monitor your Merchant Center daily for disapprovals, and quickly fix anything that Google says needs attention.

Google has policies in place because it wants to protect consumers.

By following Google’s policies and showing that you’re a legitimate advertiser, you can protect your ability to use one of the most important channels available for growing an ecommerce brand.