All items suddenly gone from google shopping free listings

[ctwork3120]

As of a few days ago, all my products have disappeared from google free shopping listings after having been there for a year. A few facts:

• all items are approved except for the small portion (less than 10%) that are out of stock
• Paid shopping ads still work
• I have no warnings on my GMC account, no issues with diagnostics, everything is clean
• no issues or warnings with google search console
• I have not changed anything on my product feed
• i am using simprosys app for feed management if that matters - they said they had no clue what’s happening

any idea? I used to have universal top 1-5 spots in all categories for my products and now they are gone. Any combo of “product + my brand name” yields nothing. No page 1, no page 10, no page 100. Totally gone. 

Please let me know if anyone has encountered this before and if I can do anything.  Thanks in advance 

[ShopDev231]

Still happening. Ironically Google is working on Merchant Next to make it easier to list products..... 

[ctwork3120]

Still happening…

[awallace]

Just PM'ed you to check if you are seeing the same as me on something possibly related to the issue.

[stejed786]

Still happening here... Google paid ads are still working fine and my page rank is still great, its just the free shopping ads that are not showing.! Its so frustrating.

[pbnj89]

Still happening for me. Googe ads not affected, product showing as active for free listings in merchant centre however not actually appearing in any google shopping pages.

[tipt0110]

still happening ... anyone shed some lights?

[eCommrece5335]

This started happening to us on 6/15, any resolution from anyone?

[eCommrece5335]

Did anyone try creating new feeds with new IDs?

[ShopDev231]

yes, it didn't work. The block is tied to the google merchant account. Nothing you change will revert the problem. I deleted the account and created a new one and products disappeared again after a few days. So something algorithmic likely triggers this. Once it's triggered there is no way to revert it. Honestly tired of paying for Google ads for sales that have neutral ROI at best. So yes Google go ahead and ban us, little to lose here anyway. Your ads are not profitable anyway. You can only profit if your customers are repeat customers.  Glad to hear that the DOJ is suing Google for monopolistic behavior. Google is effectively pocketing the bulk of retail profits, crushes small businesses and the list goes on.

[Quiltsitepro]

So glad to find this thread and finally prove I am not crazy and that Google support has been gaslighting all of us this whole time.  I am also shadowbanned by Google with zero organic shopping impressions since May 20, after many months over 400 impressions per day on 1500 products.  I have tried disconnecting the shopify feed and manually uploading a product list to control all the factors and make sure everything was perfect, but it didn't help.  It is interesting that recreating the Google Merchant Center corrected this for a few days for you.  I am very keen to try that and had already been considering it, was just looking for less drastic ways to "reset" the algorithm but they didn't work.  I have made a lot of changes that could conceivably help - for example I figured out how to get rid of urls that were mismatched to the products.  Maybe we won't get shadowbanned by Google again after the recreate, hopefully the algorithm will reevaluate and find us worthy this time.  I think a "reset" is the only way since the passage of time doesn't seem to trigger a reevaluation.  Can more people give this a try and report how recreating your account helps/doesn't help?

[Quiltsitepro]

I was thinking we could keep creating feeds with new ids to get the reset and jump start free listing impressions, test various fixes (because there is always something we can improve), and then see which fixes actually cause free listings to continue working again permanently and which fixes don't seem to make a difference.  Then we can try to find out if the fixes might work even without recreating the GMC account.

[ShopDev231]

tried creating new ids, new feed, also tested clearing up the feed and adding a product manually. Nothing like that worked. Google just marked our Google Merchant accounts as toxic and you cannot change anything to revert the problem. It may very well be a bug on their end, but I am sure they have heard complaints by now so it's not a bug, it's a feature. What remains unclear is what trigger this. There are plenty of competitor stores that are still visible despite poor authority score and organic traffic. Or maybe Google is just treating us as guinea pigs to see if now that free listing are gone we increase our ad budget. Very possible actually. This sounds like the most likely reason...

[Quiltsitepro]

What about gaining the trusted quality store badge?  It says that helps with boosting your results, so maybe that would trigger the correction of this issue.

[phil_at_gg]

We have the same issue -- on products our competitors offer, some of them have the Trusted Store badge, some of them do not.

[Quiltsitepro]

Another thought, has anyone tried free local listings to see if that gets any impressions since free listings is not working?  I applied for it but it went into limbo and never got approved.  I am wondering if it might be worthwhile to pursue that as a roundabout way of kickstarting organic impressions again. 

[Kargad]

I did and it didn't help. Back in the days we had both free listings and free local listings. When things went wrong I was playing with all possible combinations switching things on and off. Now with free local listings back they do work but i turned them off again as they add to the same organic search results as free listings.

[Fischwaage]

Oh man! This thread has cured me. I was going crazy! And we're not even using Shopify, we're using a completely different system. Yet, we're experiencing the exact same problem.

Facts:
We've been with Google / Ads / Merchant etc. for several years.
There was never an account suspension or anything similar.

Since May 6, 2023, we suddenly have 0 impressions for free listings.

Our paid shopping ads are displayed without any problems.

Even when I search for products that only we offer, or even directly with our brand/shop name in the Google Shopping tab, nothing from us appears. Completely irrelevant and other things come up, but not us.

I've been driven crazy and have exchanged 1000 emails with Google Merchant Support but never received a solution. I was only ever referred to standard articles on the web etc.

Quick question so I can also rule this out: Have you also received this "crypto certification" in your Ads accounts? We have nothing to do with crypto, but we constantly get this message. I had the suspicion that it could somehow be related, but if this is not the case with you, I can also rule that out.

[ctwork3120]

I do not use that unfortunately so hard to say that’s what caused it.

Another person thought it was an error with return policy so I reset all
that and got reverified which also did not fix the problem.

[Quiltsitepro]

No, not getting any messages about crypto so I don't think it is related.  I have a bunch of theories though.  I recreated my GMC account yesterday and made a ton of feed improvements and site improvements, and am pending initial verification and then we will see how long my products show impressions and whether I end up getting shadowbanned again.

[Fischwaage]

Wait...i dont know if i got that right.
So you created a new GMC Account and with that new account you again get those free impressions?

[Quiltsitepro]

Waiting to see... still waiting for pending initial review since I only recreated my GMC yesterday.  So far I have zero free impressions since the recreate.  I believe ShopDev231 said they recreated their GMC and got free impressions for a few days before they dropped back down.  Is that right ShopDev231, and if so how high did your number get - back to the original amount per day?

[ShopDev231]

same order of magnitude. Before we had the trusted store badge, but difference in impression not huge, maybe half, part of normal fluctuations. Listings disappeared, in my opinion, after a google review team looked into our ads account. Literally after 1 day of activating google ads the free listings went away. So I do recommend, to stop all google ads. I would like to run them at least with a low bid, but I don't dare trying this time

[Quiltsitepro]

Ok, I recreated my GMC account, started up my shopify feed, and I am now starting to get free impressions again (112 so far, much better than the zero I was getting before).  We will see how long it lasts.  So far so good!

[Fischwaage]

Okay. That's interesting. Quick question on that: Did you create an entirely new account with a new email address and so on, or did you just create a new sub-account within an existing merchant account?

[Quiltsitepro]

It is a sub account with the same email, but I deleted the original account so it isn’t a duplicate.  I let shopify create  the new gmc account.

[Quiltsitepro]

After 3 days, still getting impressions, and I am satisfied that the rate is just as good as before they disappeared in the first place.  I am thinking that if I still have good results after a week, I will post a list of all the actions I took and all the things I changed on my site, my feed, and in my GMC settings.

[Quiltsitepro]

Ok, so after a week I am still getting impressions after recreating my GMC account.  I think maybe this issue is fixed for me!

Here is what I did:

• Deleted GMC account (felt like it was pretty worthless so not much risk)
• Recreated GMC account - let Shopify create it, using same email.
• Changed 2 things on my website.
  1. Had been using a program to hide out of stock variants.  Changed it to just use strikethrough font (to avoid price mismatch errors due to Google getting redirected to a different variant.)
  2. Fixed all SEO URLs that were misleading due to cloning another product (copy-of-other-product.url).  Easy once you learn how.
• Created Feed Rules in GMC on my Shopify feed to exclude products with less than 50 character descriptions, or with less than 10 characters in the GTIN, or with availability = out of stock, and automatically inserted the right product category if empty.  This helped me avoid almost 100% of item errors from the beginning.  I can share them if anyone needs them.

[tipt0110]

Thanks for sharing the steps. Did you have to verify the new GMC account as from memory it tooks a while for mine to be verified. Were you running Google Ads on the old GMC account? Just thinking anout the risk of being disappearing completely on Google while creating the new account…

[Quiltsitepro]

Yep, took about 48 hours for verification to finish.  Until then I was still seeing my site and images on Google.  No, I wasn't doing any paid ads actively.

[aeoluswind]

Still working right now?

I am thinking about doing what you have done.

Our GMC account was suspended for 1 month, but our free listing does not return with it.

I think the issue also affected our ads - we are getting few impressions even though we set a high CPC price.

[Quiltsitepro]

Yes, still working, even a little better than before it stopped the first time.  Getting nearly 500 impressions per day.

[Luxarova]

I created a new gmc it says my free listings were active but everything else was denied 

[kdbdeals]

Hi @Quiltsitepro , 

I am also facing a same issue on my wordpress site, Can you please share more details how the merchant account got recovered.

[stejed786]

Still the same here! I’ve tried everything including resetting the returns policies etc but alas, my free ads are still hidden. 
i’ve given up now! It’s just so frustrating 

[stejed786]

I really hope that a resolution is found soon for this issue. After so long and trying so many different changes I have now just given up on the free shopping ads. Organic results are still amazing, paid ads are still working and I have no product errors in my account. It is just literally the free shopping ads. If I stress myself out anymore about it, i'll have a breakdown lol.!

[ctwork3120]

Shot in the dark - is anyone facing these issues in their GSC who is also
facing the free listings issue?

https://community.shopify.com/c/ecommerce-marketing/how-to-fix-missing-field-quot-shippingdetails-qu...

[stejed786]

Apparently if you have them setup in merchant centre then you don't need them but I'm going to add them anyway. Got to try everything now.

[fusee]

I actually came to the same conclusion and juste came back here to post the results.
After reading an article from April, about these new required structured data attributes, I added them to the products' pages (not Shopify) and the free listings of my client are back.
The attribute types are OfferShippingDetails and MerchantReturnPolicy 

[EmmanuelFlossie]

@fusee You are only required to add these structured data, if you are not submitting a feed and if in Google Merchant Center, these two details shipping and returns have not been submitted, reference: 

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/product#alternative-approach-sh...

[fusee]

In our case, we are submitting a feed, and the details of shipping and
returns were submitted. There is an error in the form of "2 missing
metrics", namely reviews and more importantly shipping fees, that we are
unable to fix.

Maybe that error was our problem. The free listings of our account went to
zero a couple of months ago. Google support could not identify the issue.

I see others in this thread getting back the free listings in the past week
or so. I'm willing to believe that us getting it back, a day after adding
the details, was therefore simply a coincidence.

[salmilk]

Hi, Can you provide a screenshot of the attribute? I don't know how to set up those two attributes you mentioned. Thanks in advance.

[fusee]

---

@salmilk wrote:

Hi, Can you provide a screenshot of the attribute? I don't know how to set up those two attributes you mentioned. Thanks in advance.

---

<script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"OfferShippingDetails","shippingDestination":{"@type":"DefinedRegion","addressCountry":"US"},"shippingRate":{"@type":"MonetaryAmount","value":9,"currency":"USD"},"deliveryTime":{"@type":"ShippingDeliveryTime","transitTime":{"@type":"QuantitativeValue","minValue":1,"maxValue":2,"unitCode":"DAY"}}}</script>
<script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"MerchantReturnPolicy","applicableCountry":["US","FR","AU","AT","BE","CA","CZ","DK","FI","DE","GR","IN","IL","IE","IT","JP","NZ","NO","PT","SK","ES","SE","CH","NL","UK"],"returnPolicyCategory":"https:\/\/schema.org\/MerchantReturnFiniteReturnWindow","returnFees":"https:\/\/schema.org\/FreeReturn","merchantReturnDays":"14","returnMethod":["https:\/\/schema.org\/ReturnByMail","https:\/\/schema.org\/ReturnInStore"]}</script>

[Luxarova]

That’s weird mine is the opposite my organic ads was giving me a lot of sales now that have decreased could it be because my google ads account has a balance due and my merchant acccount was suspended?

[salmilk]

I checked everyone's answers and it seems to be caused by the Google algorithm, our GMC account is flagged by Google, maybe we can just pray that Google updates the algorithm to fix this.

[stejed786]

Finally mine have just come back on!!  I gave up all hope lol but today I just had a look and was shocked to see my free ads displaying 🙂

[ZYJ]

Yeah, mine are back as well! The ads are displaying in the frontend, but no statics at the backend at this moment, so it should be just recovered today. Congrats to both of us! 

[ctwork3120]

No way, same! Let’s go!!!! I wonder what changed!?

[ISC]

My free ads started appearing 7/14 as well, but unfortunately my paid ads suddenly stopped showing. No idea why. Support is not helpful. Anybody in the same situation?

[poloz]

Mate since more than 1 year I'm fightung for this GMC... t's like 60% ads / 40% SEO but damn I miss these big numbers.. I paid few thousands agencies to make us GMC but no way.... did you really fix it ? Are you stores still running?

[kdbdeals]

You can contact Btech Marketing Wala for GMC support