Troubleshooting and frequently asked questions

To ensure the success of your products and to provide a good experience for potential customers, we've developed a set of policies and data quality requirements for Merchant Center.

Review regions and fix issues

In order to use the regions feature, each of your regions must meet the minimum requirements.
If you don’t meet the minimum requirements, you’ll notice an error message, with details in the “Issue” column on the “Regions” page. You can filter your regions by issue, or manually address them one by one. When you satisfy the necessary requirements, the error messages will disappear.

Price and availability mismatch

Price or availability mismatches occur when the information in your product data source differs from the price on your landing page or the structured data.

Common causes and resolutions

Inconsistent Data: Ensure the price attribute in your product data, the price on your landing page, and the price in your structured data (for example Schema.org) are all identical. For sales, use the sale price [sale_price] attribute and ensure it's reflected on the landing page. For subscriptions, use the Subscription cost [subscription_cost] attribute and clearly state the terms. Also, confirm that the currency is consistent across your data source, landing page, and structured data for your target country.
Website Microdata: Ensure that the offer and price properties in your Schema.org markup (JSON-LD or Microdata) match the price in your data source and the visual price on your landing page. Use the Rich Results Test tool to verify your website's structured data.
Delayed Updates: To reduce delays, schedule your data source uploads through the Content API or Merchant API as soon as you update products on your website. If your product status changes frequently, increase the frequency of your uploads.
Manual Edits: Manual edits to prices in Merchant Center override your data source data. Use the “Undo Edits” feature to sync your account with the data source again.
Caching Issues: Clear your website cache to ensure Google's crawlers find your most current pricing data.
Automatic Item Updates: In the Merchant Center to allow Google to automatically correct minor price or availability discrepancies.
Sale Pricing: When offering sale prices, always include the `sale_price_effective_date` attribute in your data source to ensure the sale period is correctly synchronized.
Platform-Specific Issues (Shopify): If you use Shopify, try toggling the sync off and back on to force a re-sync of your product data.

Regional specific causes

IP Geolocation: Do not use IP geolocation to automatically change prices on your landing page, as Google crawlers may not find the correct regional price.
Regional Settings: Verify that your regional settings in Merchant Center are configured correctly.

How to identify and fix mismatches

Step 1 of 3: Identify the issue

In your Merchant Center account, go to Products under Products & store in the left navigation menu.
Select Needs attention tab within the products page.
Look for issue titles like "Mismatched price," "Mismatched availability," or their regional counterparts.
Select View samples to view specific affected products.

Step 2 of 3: Audit and Correct

Perform a site-wide audit because Google might not list every violating product in your account diagnostics. Check similar items to identify issues.
Verify your website is globally accessible to Google crawlers and that product URLs lead directly to the product page without redirects.
Fix the data in your data source, landing page, and microdata to ensure they all align. Use Google's Rich Results Test to validate your structured data.

Step 3 of 3: Request a Review

Once you have corrected your data, re-upload your product data source to alert Google to the changes. After re-uploading, you can navigate to 'Products' > 'Diagnostics' and request a manual review for the affected products.
An automatic re-crawl will also occur, which typically takes 24 to 72 hours. Manual reviews can take up to seven business days. If you use a third-party app to manage your data source, ensure it has re-synced correctly or contact their support if discrepancies continue.

Try our guided data source setup troubleshooter for help fixing issues with creating, formatting or uploading your data source (for text, tab-delimited or XML file data source only), and fixing warnings or disapproval related to price.

In order to stay compliant, we recommend following the guidance on the help center articles below:

If you’re uncertain about the issue or don’t know how to proceed, you can contact the support team.

Unsupported destination based on regional settings

This is an item-level warning that indicates you’re targeting some serving destinations that aren’t supported for regional offers. Your offers will still continue to serve everywhere regional offers are supported.

Frequently asked questions

What happens when multiple regions targeting the same location (for example, two identical state/province regions) are created in the merchant center account?

There won't be any error or warning, but during serving, one will be selected to provide an optimal shopper experience, generally showing the best price and availability.

Should the region ID be honored for mobile customer journey?

Yes, you should honor the Region ID.

I'm encountering the error “Too many regional overrides.” What should I do?

Reach out to us through the contact us form and include a screenshot of the error in your email to the support team.

I’m encountering the error “Over capacity”. What should I do?

Reach out to us through the contact us form and include a screenshot of the error in your email to the support team.

When an item is disapproved due to "Mismatched regional pricing", is the product disapproved only in regions where the mismatch was found, or is it fully disapproved and not served at all?

The item won't serve in any region.

The Regions tab doesn’t show in the Merchant Center. What’s wrong?

You need to participate in Shopping ads or Free listings in Merchant Center for the Regions tab to show.

My regional products have been under review for too long.

Ensure that you’ve chosen the correct destination for the regional data source, which is Shopping ads, free listings, or both.

Where should I add regional installment fees?

If the regional installment fee is required, add the fee to the item shipping cost. If the fee isn’t required, you don’t need to provide the information. Ensure you don’t have the installation fee auto-selected on the landing page.

The item is showing “Out of stock” on the landing page, although the availability in the regional data source is “In stock”. What’s wrong?

If the click through doesn’t have a region ID appended, it means that there's a national “OOS” data source value being used for the click. If you find the region ID appended to the URL, contact our support team.

Is microdata required for RAAP?

No, it isn’t required, but microdata offers great value when it is kept up-to-date.

Can there be more than one regional data source ?

Yes, however if the 2 data sources don’t share the information for the same item, information from both will combine. While, if 2 data sources share a subset of overrides for the same item, the info from the last data source will take precedence.

Is RAAP supported at the MCA level?

At this time, RAAP settings are supported at the sub account level only.

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