Merchant Center Shipping settings

[Sarah_Edgeworth]

Hi guys,

Last week, after 8 months of running successful ads, my merchant center was blocked as I didn't have the payment types in the footer of my page. I resolved this and got the account approved again. However, since then, only a third of my products have been reapproved - the rest say 'Missing value [shipping]'.

I use the Advanced Shipping Rules app, which does calculated rates based on price - this is my only shipping rate. I have not changed any settings since before, so I'm wondering what the issue is.

In my Google app in Shopify, it has this:

Does anyone have any ideas how I can resolve this?

[Ron-Anderson]

Hi @Sarah_Edgeworth,

It's possible that your shipping rates are not in compliance with Google's terms & conditions. Google states that shipping rates on Merchant Center must match shipping rates on your store site. If they don't, rates on Google must be higher.

The theory is that if a customer sees a shipping cost on a Merchant Center listing, then comes to your store to check out, only to find rates are higher, Google looks like the 'bad guy' for misleading them. Whereas, if they're cool with the shipping cost on Merchant Center and it turns out to be lower on your site, the customer benefits.

We generally recommend to merchants using our app to contact Merchant Center directly and ask them for instructions on how to inflate shipping prices on MC to bring them into compliance.

This may not solve the issue you're having, but it might be worth looking into as a possible root cause.

Best regards,

Ron

[Sarah_Edgeworth]

Thanks Ron, that makes sense.

I think I've worked around it by adding shipping rates directly to MC. They aren't complicated - free above £40 and £3.20 under that.

This has resulted in some of the products (around 5%) being approved throughout the afternoon (yay!!)

Two further questions:
1. I'm just worried that my above fix isn't going to solve the problem indefinitely. Will any changes to Shopify override settings in MC, meaning it will go back to 'not recognising' my shipping settings?

2. How long does it take for changes I'm making in Shopify's Google app to appear in the diagnostics? I'm fixing problems but not seeing the problem disappear in the diagnostics.

Thank you

[Ron-Anderson]

Hi Sarah,

I'm glad to hear you're seeing more of your products being approved!

With regards to your questions:

1. You have to make sure that your shipping costs on MC are always the same or higher than the ones on your site. If there is any risk that prices on Shopify will change (go higher than MC), you may want to add some buffer to the prices on MC to artificially inflate them. This should help to ensure that you never run into a non-compliance issue. You may also just want to reach out to their support for advice on how to manage this going forward, as they'll be better equipped to give you guidance on how to navigate compliance with their terms.

2. Unfortunately, I don't know what the timeline is like for Google to fix the issue. We typically advise our users to contact Google directly for assistance so we aren't directly involved in the fix. I would be curious to know if you've seen any additional fixes since your reply was posted. Google has to confirm your products are in compliance, but they don't share what that process involves, so it's hard to say what the timeline looks like.

I wish I could be more helpful. If you have any updates on your progress since your last message, I would love to hear back from you.

Best regards,

Ron

[EmmanuelFlossie]

First validate if the shipping prices are indeed wrong.

Go to Google Merchant Center > Products > All Products > select your product > Scroll down till you see final attributes.

Also check what prices are created in your shipping app. If the shipping app is accurately setting your prices, then the issue is the communication between your shipping app and the free google shopping app.

In this case, I recommend you contact the shipping app support team. If they can't resolve it, contact shopify support team as they own the app you are using.

If all fails, then you need to setup the shipping settings manually using the guide here: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6069284?hl=en

[sampymishra]

Hi @Sarah_Edgeworth 

It can be a case that the shipping settings that you are trying to push are not compatible with the Google Merchant Center. This is the reason you are getting the above error. You can use flat rate shipping to get approved for the rest of the products.

You can also check the Easy Google Shopping Feed app by AdNAbu, which manages your merchant center feed and other advanced features such as Multilanguage, Multicurrency, and Metafields. 

You can also get in touch with our experts and request a demo. 

Hope this helps.