Merchant Center is a free Google account where an online shop uploads data about its products: name, price, photos, availability. This is where products reach product ads from. If the account is suspended, the products stop showing across Google services and all product advertising stops. Below are nine things a shop owner can check alone, without waiting for an email from Google.
We checked every requirement against Google’s help pages on 18 October 2026. Menu names are given as in Google’s English help; in your account they may differ slightly.
Two kinds of suspension
First, it helps to know how Google reacts. For serious violations (false company details, counterfeit goods, costs hidden from the buyer) an account can be suspended at once, with no warning. For everything else, an email comes first. The help says a warning is sent at least 7 days before a suspension, and one page says “7 or 28 calendar days”. The exact deadline is in the email itself. Below, we note which kind each violation belongs to.
1. Contact details: real and identical
Google prohibits a false company name or contact details, and a false or virtual physical address for your headquarters if you actually operate from somewhere else. This is a serious violation: no warning. Your website must show contact details: a contact form, a phone number, an email or a link to a social media profile.
In our experience, accounts also get blocked over smaller things: a different phone number in Merchant Center than on the website, or an email on someone else’s domain. We found no official requirement for this in the help, but covering yourself is easy.
Check: the name, address and phone on your website, in Merchant Center and in your Google Maps business profile match word for word. We have a separate article with six checks for the Maps profile.
2. Price and shipping: as in the cart
The amount and currency in your feed (the file or spreadsheet with your product data) must match the price on the product page and on the checkout pages. You can’t write “see price in cart”, and you can’t change the price depending on the visitor’s location detected by IP address. If the price on your site doesn’t match the data, Google may disapprove the product preemptively.
If shipping is set in Merchant Center or in the feed, its cost must match the cart. A rate lower than on your website is grounds for a warning or even a suspension. Extra charges added at checkout (except government-imposed ones) must also be included in the shipping cost.
Check: open five random products and compare price, availability and photos. Add them to the cart: is the shipping the same as the one you gave Google? If you change a price or a shipping rate on the site, update the feed the same day.
3. Payment and returns
Google requires at least one conventional payment method at checkout: a card, an invoice or payment on delivery. The buyer must be able to get from the cart all the way to payment. Your return policy must be easy to find on the site: what to do, within what time, when to expect the refund. If you don’t accept returns, say so. Hidden conditions or fees are a serious violation.
Here practice is stricter than the help. Colleagues who work through suspensions recommend real online card payment (for example through LiqPay or WayForPay) and see only a transfer to a private card as a red flag. Google’s help doesn’t require that: payment on delivery is also acceptable. We advise following practice, because it is cheaper than a mistake. Also from practice: the text of your “Payment” and “Delivery” pages should match the options in the cart.
Check: go through an order from your phone up to payment. Can you find the return policy in one click?
4. Feed language equals site language
The language of your product data must match the language of the product page and the whole checkout, including links to the return policy. The help has a nuance. The error description says you get a warning if the mismatch affects at least one product. The requirement itself is softer: the same language across most of the data and pages. It is safer to leave no exceptions.
Check: a Ukrainian feed, a Ukrainian product page, cart and “Payment and delivery” page. Turn off automatic language or currency switching by IP address.
5. Photos without text
The main photo should show only the product. Google disapproves photos with calls to action (“Buy now”), prices or discounts, words like “best” and “cheap”, watermarks and superimposed shop logos. There is also a handy option: in Merchant Center you can turn on automatic image improvements, and Google will remove minor overlays itself.
Check: look at your feed through Google’s eyes: a clean background, no text.
6. No promises you can’t keep
Google prohibits inaccurate claims and promises of an improbable result (even if it is possible), and offers that can’t be fulfilled: for example, showing a product as “in stock” when you can’t ship it. A warning comes first for this. Restarting countdown timers and discounts from a price that never existed are not named in Google’s examples, but they fall under the same logic.
Check: go through your site and remove everything you can’t back up with a document or a number.
7. No copies of other brands
Counterfeits are a serious violation: the account is suspended without warning. Google’s list includes the words “knock off”, “replica”, “imitation”, “clone”, “faux”, “fake” and “mirror image”, as well as products with someone else’s logo or name. The words “1:1” and “duplicate” aren’t in the help, but practitioners avoid them too: they have seen suspensions over exactly such wording, including on photos.
If you sell originals, say on the site that you are an official or authorized reseller, and keep your purchase documents at hand. According to practitioners, one appeal after a “counterfeit” suspension was won precisely with purchase invoices. You may name a brand if the product is of that brand or compatible with it (a case for iPhone).
Check: search your site and feed for these words in names, descriptions and on photos.
8. Prohibited and restricted products
Google has a list of products you can’t advertise at all, and others with separate rules: for example medicines or alcohol. Some require Google’s permission, and the rules depend on the country. See the full list in Google’s Shopping ads and listings policies. Whether one doubtful product can harm the whole account, Google doesn’t say directly: it can suspend an account for repeated or egregious violations. In practice, one unsuitable product sometimes triggers a check of the whole account.
Check: go through your catalogue against this list. Remove a doubtful product from the feed until you’ve clarified the rules.
9. A warning arrived: you have time
All issues are visible in Merchant Center: “Products & store” → “Products” → the “Needs attention” tab. Account-level issues: the “View setup and policy issues” button above the summary cards. Fix everything listed there, and only then request a review. After your fixes go live, Google usually recrawls the site within 24 to 48 hours, and the review itself can take up to 7 days. The number of review requests may be limited: Google gives no figure, so don’t spend them on cosmetic changes.
Three more traps worth knowing
Your site is closed to Google’s crawler. Among the reasons for disapproval in the help: robots.txt blocks Google’s crawler, the page is unavailable (server errors, slow loading) or redirects to a generic page instead of the product page. In practice this often goes unnoticed because site protection against attacks (for example Cloudflare) also blocks the Google reviewer. If products are suddenly disapproved for an “unavailable page” while the site opens fine, start here.
Prices change more often than the feed updates. Google recommends turning on automatic item updates for price: they use the markup on the product page, but only work when the crawler scans the page, so you still need to update the feed.
Mandatory registration to buy. Practitioners say forced registration before purchase risks a suspension. Google’s help is softer: you may require an account if creating it is easy and free, right on the landing page or at checkout. It is safer to let people buy as a guest.
One more thing: sign in to Merchant Center at least once every 14 months, otherwise the account may be treated as inactive.
Summary
Suspensions are not as hard to avoid as they seem: most are about mismatches between what Merchant Center says, what the site says and what the cart says. Once a quarter, go through the nine points above, and after any change of prices or terms update the feed. You can see how we work with product advertising in the sections on Merchant Center and Shopping. We also have a separate article on price in product ads.
Want a free audit of your Google Ads account? Send us a request — we will look at your account and tell you what is worth fixing before Google does it for you.