To show your products on Google and to provide a good experience for people who are shopping, follow Google's product data specification guidelines when submitting your product data to Google. If your data doesn't meet the data quality requirements for a destination, your products and your entire Merchant Center account are subject to disapproval. Disapproved products won't appear on Shopping ads or free listings, so it's important to identify the reason for disapproval and take the necessary steps to fix the issue.
On this page
- Product disapprovals
- Data quality warnings
- Common item-level issues
- Clothing and accessories product-specific issues
- Account-level enforcement for data quality violations
- How to resolve data quality issues
- Instructions for requesting a re-review after a suspension
Product disapprovals
Individual products submitted via data feeds are regularly reviewed. If the data that you provide doesn't match the product information on your website or doesn't comply with the product data specification, these products may be disapproved and stop showing on Shopping ads and free listings. Review the disapproved products, make corrections to the product data and upload them again.
Data quality warnings
Warnings let you know about issues that are currently limiting the performance of your ads or that may lead to product or account suspensions in the future if you don't resolve them. These products will continue to show on Shopping ads and free listings, but may appear with limited performance, such as lower impressions and clicks.
Common item-level issues
To ensure that your products are approved and are shown to people across Google, review any data quality warnings and update the data for the affected products. Below is a list of common issues:
Product identification issues
Limited performance due to missing value: brand [brand]
Excessive capitalisation
Generic image
Promotional overlay on image
Image too small
Invalid value (Google product category)
Conflicting values (GTIN, brand)
Clothing and accessories product-specific issues
Your product will generally have lower data quality if its required attributes are missing from your product data. This may lead to reduced performance of your offer in search results. To fix this issue, provide the missing required attributes for your product in your product data. You can add required attributes or only those that were specifically flagged for this error. Learn more about Product data specification.
To ensure that your products are approved and are shown to people across Google, review the below errors and update the data for the affected products.
Missing value: gender [gender]
Missing value: size [size]
Missing value: colour [color]
Missing value: age group [age group]
Account-level enforcement for product data quality violations
Merchant Center accounts are reviewed regularly. If it's found that your product data isn't in compliance with the product data specification requirements, you'll receive a warning email with examples of the issues that you need to fix and a timeframe in which to fix them. The warning period will also be displayed in your Merchant Center account on the 'Diagnostics' page, under 'Account issues'. You're eligible to request one courtesy review by using the 'Request review' button. During the warning period, your items will continue to appear in Shopping ads and free listings.
Account suspension
If you don't request a review during the warning period, your data will be reviewed once more at the end of the warning period. If all of your issues are resolved, the warning will be lifted, and your products will continue to show on Shopping ad and free listings. If any of the issues aren't resolved, your account will be suspended and all of your items will be disabled from appearing on free listings and in Shopping ads for that feed. You'll receive an email notification that your account has been suspended containing all of the relevant information about the data quality issues and the next steps. Your suspension status will be shown on the Home and the Diagnostics pages of your Merchant Center account.
Pre-emptive item disapproval
Warnings regarding price and availability mismatch between the feed and the landing pages result in pre-emptive item disapproval instead of an account suspension. Pre-emptive item disapproval (PID) is still considered account-level enforcement and an account review is required to fully resolve the issues. It's called 'pre-emptive item disapproval' because Google errs on the side of caution and disapproves items that are likely to violate requirements (for example, items that have a different price on the landing page and throughout the checkout process compared to the feed). While you resolve your product data quality issues for items that don't meet requirements, you can still show other products from your account that meet the requirements.
How to resolve account warnings caused by data quality issues
To fix product-data-related warnings, you'll need to update the Google fields for the affected products. Remove or fix any items that don't meet the product data specification requirements. After you update your products, it can take 3–5 working days for Google to review them.
You can update your product data from your Google & YouTube app by following the below steps:
- On your Shopify admin page, navigate to Sales channels and click Google.
- On the Overview page, go to the Product status section.
- Click Manage products to view your synced products.
- Update desired fields for one or more products and click Save.
Next steps after you've fixed the issues related to:
- Account warning: A review happens automatically at the end of the 28-day waiting period. If you'd like to request a review before then, you can do so by using the 'Request review' button in Merchant Center. You're entitled to one courtesy review during the warning period.
- Account suspended or in pre-emptive item disapproval: Request a review by using the 'Request review' button in Merchant Center (if applicable).
Instructions for requesting a re-review after a suspension notification
From the Google & YouTube app on Shopify
- On your Shopify admin page, navigate to Sales channels and click Google.
- Click the Settings tab.
- Under Your Google Merchant Center account, click Request re-review.
- On the Google Merchant Help page that loads, complete the form and indicate that you are requesting a re-review of your shop.
- Click Submit.
From Merchant Center account
In your Merchant Center account, account-level issues show in a banner at the top of the page. Account-level issues are also found in the summary cards at the top of the 'Needs attention' page.
You can follow one of the in-product flows below to resolve your account-level issue:
- Click on Review and fix on the home page
- Click on Fix on the banner at the top of your account, or
- Click on Fix on a card on the 'Needs attention' tab
If you've already fixed issues with disapproved accounts or product offers, or if you disagree with the issue, then you may request a review.
Your issue will disappear after the review. If the disapproval remains and you're uncertain about how to proceed, contact us for support.
Cool-down period
If your account is already suspended, you'll have opportunities to request an account review before a cool-down period is initiated for further reviews.
The process will then continue as follows:
- During the cool down, the review button will be disabled and your account will remain suspended or in a pre-emptive item disapproval state.
- With each unsuccessful review afterwards, an increase of the cool-down period may be applied.
- During this cool-down period, your account will remain suspended. You won't be able to request another review during this time.
- Use the cool-down period to review and fix your account, data and website issue(s) as support may be limited until your issues are addressed.
- After the cool-down period passes, the 'Request review' button will be available again.
- You can see the end date for any cool-down period by navigating to the 'Products' page in Merchant Center Next , clicking the 'Needs attention' tab, then you'll see 'View setup and policy issues'.