How to Fix a Merchant Center Misrepresentation Suspension

Welcome to today's video. I will show you how you can fix a Google Merchant Center suspension regardless of if it's a misrep website needs improvement or whatever is going on. I will show you how in some quick and easy steps. So, let's dive straight into it. How to use this guide. So, first of all, we go through everything step by step, top down. Identify first the suspension type, right? So, don't overreact. Don't touch anything before that. You want to see, okay, what's actually going on? because sometimes you get the notification about a misrep for example, but in a lot of cases it just affects free listings and you can still continue to run ads normally, right?

So that's important because if that's the case, then you don't want to touch anything and break the setup that's still working. Go for everything step by step that I show you here. Like I said, fix only what's relevant. Don't try to invent something new or something that you saw here and there. Just focus on the basics, what's relevant to be fixed. Don't tweak too many different things that don't even make any sense. Then the fourth point, really good point as well. If you're done with all the changes and improvements that I will show you here, right? Don't immediately request for a review. Wait 2, three days, give Google some time to index and crawl everything because otherwise you make the changes, you request for review and Google didn't even like recognize your changes yet, right?

So give it some time. You can also use the Google search console to speed it up. upload your sitemap again and then it starts to index faster, right? And yeah, that's pretty much it. So, wait for indexing and then request a review at the right time and don't just randomly request for reviews, right? Make the changes first because it gets harder and harder with every review to get it live. So, you want to make the changes first and then you have to be pretty sure about getting it right and getting it back. All right, so that's pretty much it. Step number one, identify the suspension type.

Like I said before, right? You want to know, okay, what is this about? Is it a

misrep? Is the website needs improvement? Maybe it's just three listings like I said before, right? And then you don't want to touch anything. So that's the first step. Sounds logical, but can also be, you know, sometimes you get notifications and you think something is disapproved and you start to overreact and maybe it's just like a feed mismatch, right? then it's not even an account suspension but just a product suspension or feed issue that they can easily fix. So never like touch things blindly. Check the situation first and then we act accordingly. Right? Then the most important root cause for misrepres identity or information discrepancy in general.

Right? But business identity the most important things you want to clearly state in the footer and on the rest of your site. Okay, what is the business? What's the address, phone number, email address and all of that has to work and needs to be correct right based on your business license and that same information needs to be reflected in the GMC. So business name consistency like I said the information needs to be reflected everywhere on the website in the GMC. You cannot say one thing there and one thing on the other side, right? So, it needs to be consistent. Like I said, address validity, make sure the contact information is correct.

And that's pretty much it, right? Sounds easy, but just make sure it's done properly and you don't invent any weird business info because obviously Google will be able to track that, right? Just the basics basically. Nothing new. Next step, policy pages. Also super important. Sounds easy as well, but just make sure it's done properly. If you use any type of templates, don't just copy paste randomly what everybody has on the store because then it's an issue as well, right? Just come up with a good policy template, adjust it accordingly for your purpose and make sure the information is correct and again information consistency, right? So, whatever you

have on your website about shipping, for example, if you say on your website 7-day shipping, you cannot have 30-day shipping in a GMC. Of course, that will flag something, right? So, you want to make sure information consistency, everything is easy to read and not wake in any shape or form. So, you don't want to have like information that sounds unclear or inconsistent as well, right? It should be very straightforward, easy language, easy to read, very clear. Okay, what's the return policy? What's the refund policy? What's the shipping conditions? How does it work? Right? You want to have those pages, return and refund policy, shipping policy, contact page, about us page, also recommended, privacy policy, and terms and conditions.

Basically, just the basics that you have on every store. And that's pretty much it. Again, very straightforward as well. It's just about making sure everything is clear, right? Clear is the key word here when it comes to everything. business information policy pages needs to be very clear. Next, product claims and content conflict. So here again needs to be consistent across the whole site, right? You don't want to have any conflicting language or even within the product. For example, if you say one thing in the title, you cannot say something else in the product description or in the feed what gets pushed to the GMC, right?

So needs to be consistent. Everything needs to match. Avoid salesy marketing language like oh this is the number one product when it's not really like verifiable you know just keep it clean clear clean information over like salesy marketing language right especially if it's like bushy or incorrect of course very straightforward as well and then again here point about information consistency no mismatch on every level right also includes the feed so you don't want to have any feed information that's not correct on the website like price for example if in your feed it says the product costs $100 for example but it's actually like $200 on the site

that's an issue as well right very basic of course but just make sure you don't have any feed quality issues whatsoever the price is correct availability especially the the main things nothing fishy with the product title or like weird spelling mistakes or even like salesy language there again avoid capital letters in the product title as well Google doesn't like it and and it disapproves either your product or if there are like too many issues with your business overall. The whole GMC, right? Just make sure the feed has a good quality overall. All right, trust signal manipulation. Very straightforward, very self-explanatory as well. Don't use any fake reviews, right?

No social proof, no fake reviews, testimonials you got from another website. Like, of course, those things track something. It's very easy for the crawler to verify that sometimes, right? So, you want to avoid that. Don't do any of that especially in the beginning of course otherwise you will have issues with your GMC broken links and technical stability basic SEO another very straightforward point you just need to make sure it's done properly of course if Google recognizes hey this is a new site with a new domain basically zero traffic and I see 20 broken links or two buttons that are not working that's just a signal for Google hey that's not a trustworthy site right and then you will experience issues with your GMC.

So very straightforward. Unstable site, unreliable merchant suspended. Google doesn't think too much about it. They just shut it down because they don't want to have quality issues. Make sure you have basic SEO which includes okay policy pages set up properly. No conflicting information, no broken links, buttons are working. But if you change any links, make sure you have a redirect, no unfinished pages, right? Where you have like five collection pages on the site and four of them are empty right now. That's also like why is the page there, right? Why is it empty? Looks incomplete. Looks unreliable for Google. No checkout issues. Make sure you have decent page speed.

Make sure it's actually accessible on mobile as well. So on

desktop and mobile, of course. And that's pretty much it here as well. Then behavior and upload pattern includes all the changes that they make. Do the feed, do your catalog, do the website itself, right? You don't want to do any suspicious changes. Especially in the beginning when you just try to get live when you just try to run ads. You want to keep it easy. You want to like get a clean basic store life, clean feed, clean catalog. Then you start to run ads and you just want to build some trust with Google first before you do any changes later on. If it's already too late and you're already suspended, okay, then go back to that.

Have a clean store, clean feed, clean everything. If you get it back, if you get it running again, keep it easy for one, two weeks before you start making any kinds of changes again, right? The more changes there are, especially random weird changes in the beginning, that can be a negative trust signal for Google. And then, like we said, the review timing, don't just do random reviews. First of all, go through everything first, make the changes, and wait a little bit. Give it some time to get indexed again so the crawler can actually process your changes and then ask for a review. That's pretty much it.

Why we don't make random reviews? Because with every time you have been suspended before, with every rejected review, it will get harder and harder to get it live. Because if you already got rejected twice, Google will put you in a different kind of category. They will be like, "All right, already got rejected twice. Doesn't seem to be reliable." they will probably start to check it manually as well and it would just be more and more difficult for you to get it live compared to the first time because if you got suspended once Google is still a bit more lenient because then it's like okay maybe it was just like a one time thing right or a crawler issue so the first time it's still a bit easier so you want to show Google hey you actually care you did all the changes you kept it simple you stuck to that and then there's also way higher

probability that you get it live. If you're just like, I will try it and see if I get it live, it will probably not work out. So yeah, that's everything you need to know. You see, there is no magic hack like that. There's no, oh, implement this and it will work. You just need to go back to the basics and make sure the basics are done properly. And that's it.