Merchant CenterApproval Checklist.

Google's Misrepresentation policy bans false brand affiliation and impersonation. Selling a branded product is fine. Implying you are that brand, or an official partner when you are not, is not. This is the single fastest way to lose an account.

Check it: Read your homepage, About page, and product titles as a stranger. Do any of them suggest you are an official store, authorised dealer, or partner of a brand you have no agreement with?

Fix it: Remove any wording that implies a partnership you do not have. Sell the product under your own store name. If you do have an agreement, be ready to show it in an appeal.

A timer that resets when you reload, or an 'only 3 left' badge that never changes, is a misleading offer. Google's policy covers promoting a deal that is not really running. Reviewers reload pages, and it is an easy thing to catch.

Check it: Load a product page, note the timer and the stock count, then open the same page in a private window. If the numbers reset, they are fake.

Fix it: Remove the app or turn off the fake-scarcity feature. If a sale really does end Friday, a real end date is fine. Only show a stock count if it comes from real inventory.

Seeded or imported reviews that were never written for your store are a misrepresentation of your product. Review apps that ship with placeholder or supplier reviews are the usual cause, and most merchants do not realise they are on.

Check it: Open your review app and look for imported, sample, or demo reviews. Reverse image search a few review photos. If a photo appears on twenty other stores, it is not your customer.

Fix it: Delete every review that was not written by a real customer of yours. An honest empty review section beats a fake full one.

Google's policy names omission of relevant information: you have to disclose the payment model and the full expense a customer will bear before and after purchase. Shipping or handling fees that only appear on the last checkout step are the classic trigger.

Check it: Add a product to the cart and go through checkout as a customer. Does any new charge appear that was not stated on the product page or in your shipping policy?

Fix it: State shipping costs on the product page or link clearly to the shipping policy from it. Never introduce a fee for the first time on the payment step.

Google's policy covers unavailable offers: promoting products you do not stock, or a deal that is no longer active. Google's 2026 policy update added examples specifically around non-delivery, so this is being enforced harder, not less.

Check it: Pick five products at random from your feed. Could you ship each one within the delivery window you promise, today?

Fix it: Remove products you cannot supply. If a supplier has gone dark, pull those items from the feed rather than letting orders come in.

Google's 2026 clarification added inoperable return and refund processes as a named example under Misrepresentation. Having a returns page is no longer enough. The process it describes has to function.

Check it: Follow your own returns process end to end. Does the email address on the returns page receive mail? Does the return form submit? Would a customer get a reply?

Fix it: Test the inbox and the form yourself. Assign a real person to returns. A returns page that promises a reply nobody sends is worse than no page.

Titles, descriptions, and photos copied straight from a supplier catalogue or a competitor make your store look like one of thousands of identical fronts. It is also how a reviewer confirms a store is a copy: one reverse image search.

Check it: Reverse image search your three best sellers. Paste a sentence of your product description into Google in quotes. How many other stores come back?

Fix it: Rewrite titles and descriptions in your own words. Shoot or commission your own photos for your main products. Start with the products that carry your revenue.

Google needs to see how long a customer has, who pays return shipping, how a refund is issued, and how long it takes. A vague page reads as no policy at all.

Check it: Open your returns page. Does it state a return window in days, who pays return postage, the refund method, and the refund timeframe?

Fix it: Write all four into the page. Numbers, not adjectives: '30 days', not 'a reasonable period'. Link it from your footer and from checkout.

Google checks that your delivery promise is stated and achievable. Promising 3 to 5 day delivery on stock that ships from overseas is a misrepresentation, not an optimistic estimate.

Check it: Does your shipping page state delivery times, costs, and which countries you ship to? Do the times match how long orders really take to arrive?

Fix it: State the real window, including processing time before dispatch. If it takes 12 to 20 days, say 12 to 20 days. Merchants get suspended for the gap, not for being slow.

Google compares the shipping settings in your Merchant Center account against the shipping page on your site. If the account says 5 days free and the site says 10 days for 6 EUR, that mismatch is the whole violation.

Check it: Open Merchant Center, go to your shipping settings, and read them side by side with your shipping page. Compare rates, delivery windows, and countries.

Fix it: Make them identical. Copy the wording across rather than paraphrasing it, so the two cannot drift apart later.

Same comparison, on the returns side. Your Merchant Center return window and conditions have to match the returns page a customer would read.

Check it: Read your Merchant Center return settings against your returns page. Do the window, the conditions, and who pays return shipping all agree?

Fix it: Align them. If you change one later, change the other in the same sitting.

Stores often carry a shipping promise in the header banner, a different one on the product page, and a third in the policy page. A reviewer reading all three sees a store that does not know its own terms.

Check it: Write down every delivery and returns promise on your site: banner, product page, FAQ, policy pages, checkout. Do they all say the same thing?

Fix it: Pick the true one and make every other place match it. Announcement bars are the usual offender because nobody updates them.

Google expects your legal business name, a physical address, a phone number, and an email address to be clearly listed and consistent with your Merchant Center settings. Hidden contact details are one of the most common misrepresentation triggers on new stores.

Check it: Can you find all four without logging in or filling out a form? Check the footer and the contact page.

Fix it: Put them in the footer of every page and on a dedicated contact page. A contact form on its own is not enough.

Google cross-checks the business information in your Merchant Center account against what is on your site. Small mismatches, like a different phone number or a shortened business name, are enough to hold up a review.

Check it: Open Merchant Center business information and read it against your site footer, character by character.

Fix it: Make them identical, including how the address is written. Fix the account to match the site, or the site to match the account, but do not leave both half right.

A reviewer may test them. An email that bounces or a phone number that rings out undoes the point of listing them, and it supports the finding that the business is not real.

Check it: Email your own support address from a personal account. Call your own number. Did both work?

Fix it: Use an address on your own domain that a person monitors. If you cannot staff a phone line, use a number that reaches a voicemail you actually check.

Products will not serve from an unverified domain. It is also how Google ties the store to you rather than to whoever else might be listing the same URL.

Check it: In Merchant Center, look at your business information. Does your website show as verified and claimed?

Fix it: Verify through your ecommerce platform, an HTML tag, or Google Analytics, then claim the URL. Shopify does this for you when you connect the sales channel.

Google crawls the landing page and compares the price to your feed. A mismatch stops the product serving. Currency and tax display differences cause this as often as real price changes do.

Check it: In Merchant Center, open Diagnostics and look for price mismatch issues. Then spot check three products against their live pages.

Fix it: Fix the source of the drift. Usually it is a sale price that updated on the site but not in the feed, or a feed that sends prices excluding tax while the page shows them including tax.

If a medium costs more than a small, the feed has to say so per variant. Sending one price for a whole product group means most of the variants are wrong.

Check it: Pick a product with several sizes or colours at different prices. Does each variant row in your feed carry its own price?

Fix it: Make sure your feed sends one row per variant with that variant's price, and that each row's link goes to the page showing that variant.

Sending 'in stock' for a product the page shows as sold out is a mismatch Google can see. Enough of them together escalates from item issues to an account review.

Check it: Filter your feed for in-stock products, then open a few that you know are low or out of stock. Does the page agree?

Fix it: Turn on automatic inventory sync between your store and Merchant Center. On a manual feed, update availability within a day of any stock change.

Google does not allow promotional overlays, watermarks, or added text on the main product image. Sale badges baked into the image file are the most common version of this and merchants rarely notice, because the badge looks like part of the design.

Check it: In Merchant Center, look at Diagnostics for image issues. Then look at your main images themselves. Any '50% OFF' flashes, logos, or borders?

Fix it: Use a clean product shot as the main image. Keep the badge version for your own storefront if you want it, but feed the clean file to Google.

The same photo across many products signals a catalogue that was bulk imported rather than curated, and it means the image does not actually show the product being sold.

Check it: Sort your catalogue by image URL. How many products share one file?

Fix it: Give each product an image of that product. Where variants differ in colour, give each colour its own image.

For products that carry a real manufacturer barcode, Google wants the correct one. A wrong or invented GTIN is worse than none: it suppresses the product quietly and it misidentifies what you are selling.

Check it: In Merchant Center, check Diagnostics for GTIN issues. Valid GTINs are 8, 12, 13, or 14 digits and pass a check-digit test.

Fix it: Send the real GTIN where one exists. Where you make the product yourself, leave the GTIN out and mark the identifier as not existing. Never invent one to fill the field.

A link that 404s, redirects to the homepage, or lands on a different product is an automatic item disapproval. Deleted products and changed URL handles are the usual cause.

Check it: Run your feed's link column through a broken link checker. Spot check that a few land on the exact product, not a collection.

Fix it: Remove rows for products that no longer exist. When you change a product handle, update the feed in the same pass.

A collection with nothing in it is a dead end for a customer and an unfinished corner of the store for a reviewer. Duplicated collection names have the same effect.

Check it: List your collections. Any with zero products, or two with near-identical names?

Fix it: Fill them or delete them. Give each one a distinct name that describes what is actually inside.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

Duplicated or blank SKUs break the link between your feed rows and your real inventory, which is what causes availability and price mismatches later. It is also how you lose the ability to tell which variant actually sold.

Check it: Export your products and sort by SKU. Any blanks, or the same code on two different variants?

Fix it: Give every variant a unique SKU before you connect the feed. Fixing this after Google has ingested the catalogue is much more work.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

Products that are permanently gone but still listed create availability mismatches between your feed and your pages, and they send paid clicks to something nobody can buy.

Check it: Filter your catalogue for zero inventory. Are any of those still active in the feed?

Fix it: Archive or unpublish anything you are not restocking. For items coming back, set availability honestly rather than leaving them as in stock.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

Leaving a supplier's name in the vendor or brand field tells Google and your customer that someone else makes and sells this. If you are the brand, say so. If you resell a real brand, use that brand's actual name.

Check it: Look at the vendor or brand field across your catalogue. Does it say your store, or a supplier's internal name?

Fix it: Set it to your own brand for own-label products, or the genuine manufacturer for products you resell. Never invent a brand name that does not exist.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

Google's policy prohibits promoting harmful health claims and content that contradicts scientific consensus. Words like cures, treats, prevents, heals, or clinically proven trigger this. It catches beauty, supplements, pet, and fitness catalogues constantly.

Check it: Search your product titles and descriptions for: cure, treat, prevent, heal, remedy, clinically proven, doctor recommended, FDA approved.

Fix it: Describe what the product is and how it is used, not what it fixes. 'Supports comfort' instead of 'relieves pain'. 'Designed for calm' instead of 'treats anxiety'.

Google's policy names false claims that suggest improbable results as a likely outcome. 'Lose 10kg in a week' and 'guaranteed to double your sales' are the shape of this.

Check it: Read your best sellers' descriptions. Do any promise a specific dramatic outcome, or guarantee a result you cannot back up?

Fix it: Cut the guarantee or state what is actually typical. If you have real evidence, say what it is and where it came from.

Falsely implying an endorsement or affiliation with another brand, a publication, or a person is named directly in the policy. 'As seen on' badges with no real coverage behind them are the everyday version.

Check it: Look at every logo strip, badge, and 'featured in' row on your site. Can you produce the article or the agreement behind each one?

Fix it: Remove anything you cannot evidence. Where the coverage is real, link to it so a reviewer can confirm it in one click.

Weapons, tobacco, recreational drugs, counterfeit goods, and adult content are prohibited outright. Some categories, like alcohol and healthcare, are restricted and need extra steps. One prohibited item can pull the whole account into review.

Check it: In Merchant Center, filter products by disapproved and read the reasons. Then check your catalogue against Google's prohibited content list yourself.

Fix it: Remove prohibited items from the feed entirely. For restricted categories, complete whatever approval or certification Google asks for before listing.

If checkout errors, demands an account, or has no working payment method, Google cannot verify you are a functioning shop. A broken checkout looks the same as a fake storefront from the outside.

Check it: Place a real test order on your live site, on mobile, as a guest. Did it go through and did you get a confirmation email?

Fix it: Fix whatever blocked it. Allow guest checkout. Make sure at least one payment method works in every country you list.

Google requires a secure checkout. Mixed content, where an image or script loads over HTTP inside an HTTPS page, breaks this even when the padlock looks fine at a glance.

Check it: Open your cart and checkout in a browser and look for security warnings in the address bar and the console.

Fix it: Serve every asset over HTTPS. Custom domains and third-party checkout apps are where this usually breaks.

Reviewers are not always in your market. If a geo-block, a password page, or an age gate stops the site loading for them, they cannot review it and the account stalls.

Check it: Load your site through a VPN from a country you target. Does it open without a password, a country picker wall, or an interstitial?

Fix it: Remove password protection and geo-blocks for the countries in your Merchant Center targeting. If you must gate by age, let the crawler and reviewer through the front page first.

Google is sceptical of domains registered days ago, and reasonably so: that is what throwaway stores look like. Age is not a policy requirement and nobody will tell you a number, but a domain with some history behind it draws a lighter review than one registered on Monday.

Check it: Look up your domain's registration date with a WHOIS lookup. Under a couple of weeks old with no traffic yet is the hardest starting position.

Fix it: Give a new domain a week or two of real activity before you apply. Buying an established domain on an auction market is a normal purchase and it is fine, but sell your own business on it. Do not imply your company has been trading since the domain was first registered.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

A store with genuine visitors looks like a business. A store with none looks like a listing. This is about ordering: get real traffic from your other channels first, then apply.

Check it: Open your analytics. Have real sessions arrived in the last two weeks, from real sources?

Fix it: Run your Meta, TikTok, or organic traffic to the store first and let real people browse it. Never buy traffic or engagement to manufacture the signal. Purchased traffic is worthless to you and Google treats faked engagement as circumventing its systems.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

If Google's own Safe Browsing index has flagged your domain, nothing else on this list matters. It is the first gate and it is free to check.

Check it: Run your domain through Google's Safe Browsing site status tool at transparencyreport.google.com.

Fix it: If it flags anything, find and remove the malicious code or the compromised app, then request a review through Search Console before you touch Merchant Center.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

A reviewer clicking into a 404 sees an unfinished store. Deleted products and renamed pages are the usual cause, and the links that break are often the policy pages that matter most.

Check it: Run the site through any broken link checker. Click every footer link yourself.

Fix it: Fix or remove every dead link. Start with the footer, the policy pages, and the navigation, because those are the ones a reviewer actually clicks.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

A very slow store is harder to review and worse for the customers you are paying to send there. It is not a policy threshold, it is basic quality.

Check it: Run your homepage and a product page through PageSpeed Insights on mobile.

Fix it: Compress oversized images, drop apps you are not using, and lazy-load anything below the fold. Most Shopify stores are slow because of app scripts, not the theme.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

Reviewers see the same default theme, the same stock layout, and the same trending products thousands of times a day. Looking like the pile is not a violation, but it earns a closer look. This is also just good business: a store that looks like a clone converts like one.

Check it: Put your homepage next to three competitors. Would a customer be able to tell yours apart with the logo covered?

Fix it: Customise the theme, use your own photography, and write your own copy. You do not need a custom build, you need it to not be the out-of-the-box demo.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

A brand-new account that uploads hundreds of products in one go, then hundreds more the day after approval, is the pattern Google watches for. Adding products steadily as a real shop would is both safer and easier to fix when something breaks.

Check it: How many products are you planning to push in your first upload, and how does that compare to what the store had last week?

Fix it: Start with your core range, get it approved, then add in batches. Our own slow-drip write-up covers the cadence we use on new accounts.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

A free webmail address as the only contact for a shop reads as temporary. An address on your own domain costs almost nothing and signals that the business and the store are the same thing.

Check it: Is the email in your footer and on your contact page at your own domain, or a free provider?

Fix it: Set up an address on your domain and use it everywhere, including in Merchant Center. Make sure someone actually reads it.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

Reviewers do look you up. A brand with real profiles and real posts is easier to believe than one that exists only on the domain it is selling from. Building genuine social presence is ordinary marketing, and you want it anyway.

Check it: Search your brand name. Do real profiles come up, with posts that a person actually made?

Fix it: Set up the profiles you will genuinely use and post real content: products, behind the scenes, customers. Never buy followers or engagement. It fools nobody who looks properly and Google treats manufactured signals as circumventing its systems.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

Reviews you host yourself are your word. Reviews on an independent platform are someone else's. A profile with a handful of genuine reviews, including replies to the unhappy ones, does more for trust than a wall of five stars on your own product pages.

Check it: Search your brand on the review platforms your customers would use. Is there anything there, and has anyone replied to the negative ones?

Fix it: Claim your profile and invite real buyers to review after delivery. Reply to criticism plainly and publicly. Never buy reviews or write your own.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

A contact page with a bare form and nothing else is the weakest page on most new stores, and it is one of the first a reviewer opens. Business name, address, email, phone, and the hours you actually reply do more work here than any badge.

Check it: Open your contact page. Is there anything on it beyond a form?

Fix it: Add your business name, address, email, phone, and support hours. State a realistic response time and then meet it. Do not fabricate a live-chat presence or staff who are not there.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

Most stores ship four generic questions and move on. A thorough FAQ is the cheapest trust page you will ever build: it answers the reviewer's questions and your customers' at the same time, and it cuts support volume.

Check it: Does your FAQ cover carriers, payment methods, delivery times, how to track an order, wrong sizes, the returns process, and how long refunds take?

Fix it: Write a real answer for each of those, in plain language. If a customer has emailed you the same question twice, it belongs on the page.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.

Sending customers to a generic third-party tracking page is the most recognisable dropshipping tell there is, and it hands your post-purchase experience to someone else. A tracking page on your own domain is better for the customer and better for how the store reads.

Check it: Where does your order confirmation email send someone to track their parcel?

Fix it: Use a tracking app that hosts the page on your domain with your branding. Keep the carrier and the real delivery window honest on it.

Not a Google rule. This is what we do across 200+ ecom accounts.