Issues in Merchant Center

As part of our recent suspension of ads in Russia, we will also pause ads on Google properties and networks globally for advertisers based in Russia.

Due to the ongoing war in Ukraine, we will be temporarily pausing Google ads from serving to users located in Russia.

Label assets that are AI edited or created

AI regulations in the European Union, India, New York, California, South Korea, and Vietnam require that ads with certain AI-generated or edited assets include disclosures and/or labels that inform consumers that the ads were made with AI.

Add labels directly to your creatives or use the AI label setting in Google Ads, Display & Video 360, Campaign Manager 360, Merchant Center, and Ads Editor to add AI labels to your creatives. Learn more about how to Use AI content label settings to label your ads.

Notes

These labels will not be in violation of Google policies prohibiting text overlays and watermarks.
Use of the AI label setting in Google’s advertising products doesn't guarantee your compliance with specific regulations. Seek legal guidance and take measures as needed to ensure your ads and assets follow all local legal obligations and policies

Product Disapprovals: Troubleshoot & Fix in Merchant Center

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To ensure the success of your products and to provide a good experience for potential customers, policies and data quality requirements have been established for Merchant Center. If your product data and online store don't comply with these policies, your products might get disapproved or your account could be suspended. These issues can prevent your products from showing on Google.

On this page

Product-level issues
Setup & policy issues
Priority fixes
Related links

Product-level issues

Product-level issues can occur if the product data you provide doesn’t match the product information on your online store, if your product data doesn’t follow the product data specification, or if your products violate our Shopping policy requirements. Product-level issues only affect individual products, not your entire account.

Note: Products targeting multiple countries may receive different disapprovals or warnings for each country due to location-based policy differences.

Types of product-level issues:

Warnings: Products that receive warnings will continue to show across Google, however their performance may be limited. If warnings aren't resolved, they can lead to disapprovals.
Disapprovals: Disapproved products stop showing across Google.
Preemptive item disapproval (PID): This occurs if the price or availability of your products don't match between your product data and product pages. When a PID is in place, products that are likely to violate requirements are disapproved as a precaution. A review is required to resolve these issues.

Common online store issues that can lead to product disapprovals:

Use of placeholder content
Broken links
Missing or inconsistent information
Inaccurate product descriptions
Mismatched categories between your online store and product data
Robots.txt configuration blocking Googlebot or Googlebot-image
Product page unavailable (example: server errors or slow loading times)
Product page redirects to a generic page instead of the specific product page

To avoid potential issues, ensure your product details, descriptions, and categories are consistent across your online store and product data source. You can also turn on automatic updates, which will help reduce the risk of preemptive product disapproval (PID) for issues such as price and availability mismatches. To do this, go to the Automations tab under Products.

How to find and resolve product-level issues:

All product-level issues can be found in the Needs attention tab. To review all of your disapproved products, follow these steps:

Review disapproved products

Go to Products under “Products & store” and then select the Needs attention tab.
Under All products that need attention, you'll find a list of all the products in your account that have an issue and need attention.
Select the filter icon to filter this list by issue impact, labels, status, title, or what needs attention.
To download a complete list (.csv) of all affected items, select the download icon .

Note: The Issue Details Page (IDP) provides a single, comprehensive view for each issue. On this page, you can view the issue's business impact with metrics like lost click potential, review examples of affected products, and find clear and actionable steps to resolve issues. Learn more About the Issue Details Page.

Request a review for product-level issues

It’s recommended that you fix product-level issues by editing your product data to correct the issue and then re-uploading your product data. If the review is successful, the disapproval will disappear.

Setup & policy issues

Setup & policy issues impact all of your products in Merchant Center.

Types of setup & policy issues:

Warnings: If Google finds that your product data or online store aren’t in compliance with the product data requirements or violate our Shopping policy requirements, you may receive a warning email with examples of the issues that you need to fix and a warning period in which to fix them. During the warning period your products will continue to appear across Google, however their performance may be limited.
Suspensions: If you don't manually request a review during the warning period, your product data and online store will be reviewed once more at the end of the warning period. If all issues are resolved, the warning will be lifted. If any of the issues aren't resolved, your account will be suspended and your products won’t appear across Google.

Note: In some cases when an egregious setup & policy issue is detected, no warning is given and the account is suspended immediately.

How to find and resolve setup & policy issues

Setup & policy issues show in a banner at the top of your Merchant Center account. You can select Review and fix or Fix in the banner and follow the steps to resolve your setup & policy issues. You may also view these issues by following these steps:

View account-level issues

Go to Products under “Products & store” and then select the Needs attention tab.
Under the “Needs attention” tab and above the summary cards, select View setup and policy issues.
Follow the steps flow to resolve your setup & policy issues.

Request a review for setup & policy issues

After fixing the problem on your online store or data source, you can request a review directly from the Needs attention tab. Depending on the violation, there might be extra verification steps and a limit on how many reviews you can request. Note that reviews can take up to 7 days to complete. If the problem remains and you’re unsure how to proceed, contact support.

Note: If you use a third-party platform to list your products, you may request a review directly through their application.

Priority fixes

The Priority fixes feature filters the Needs attention page to display only issues likely to have a medium or high impact on your products' performance and potential clicks. This helps you focus on critical problems that affect performance and reduces the distraction of numerous low-impact issues.

Note: This feature is available for accounts where Google can estimate potential product performance.

When the Prioritized fixes toggle is on, issues with little to no impact may not be displayed on this page. To view all the issues, turn off the Prioritized fixes toggle on the Needs attention page. This will remove the default filters and show all issues associated with your account.

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