My Shopify-based e-commerce store (Romania/EU) has been facing a Google Merchant Center (GMC) account suspension for “Misrepresentation” for an extended period. Despite extensive efforts, the issue persists and Google support will not clarify what specifically is still non-compliant. Here’s what I’ve done so far:
Website Audit and Policy Updates:
Fully updated all required policies on my website: Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy (GDPR-compliant), Returns & Refunds, Shipping, Warranty, Cookies.
All business information (registered name, CUI, J number, address, phone, email) is clearly and consistently displayed in the website footer and policy pages.
Transparent business identity, real customer support email, and store address are listed everywhere.
Google Merchant Center/Product Feed Compliance:
Audited all product listings; completed every Google product attribute (age group, gender, condition, MPN/GTIN, availability, etc.) for all products in the feed.
Ensured no discrepancies between product pricing, availability, and details between Shopify and GMC.
Double-checked for any misleading or exaggerated product claims.
Technical & UX:
Ensured secure HTTPS/SSL throughout the site, fast page loads, no 404 errors, no “unavailable” products in feed.
All checkout, returns, contact, and help pages are easily accessible—tested from desktop and mobile.
Appeal and Support Responses:
Submitted multiple appeals to Google GMC, with detailed cover letters, screenshots, and documentation outlining every change and compliance measure.
Google’s only response is a copy-paste rejection, citing “confidentiality” and offering no actionable feedback, despite verification that major compliance steps have been implemented.
Google Ads Linking:
Checked Google Ads and GMC linking; understood that appealing through Google Ads does not unsuspend GMC.
Request:
Has anyone resolved a persistent misrepresentation suspension after similar steps? Are there less obvious technical, legal, or UX details that could still trigger this automated/systemic trust flag with Google?
Are there Shopify app-specific issues, microdata or structured data considerations, or other Shopify quirks that are known to cause Merchant Center rejections in 2025?
Any debugging checklists, expert audits, or real-world interventions are welcomed!
Any suggestions or real success stories are hugely appreciated!
Thank you in advance.
This is a common problem when you drop ship lots of random products. You will have a much lower trust signal. Meaning Google does not trust at the moment that you can deliver what you sell. Because there are thousands of merchants doing the same exact thing, and you don’t have control over delivering goods.
You are not allowed to force a customer to accept terms and conditions when adding items to the cart.
And you are not allowed to do this in the checkout.
You will have more issues, so make sure to check the guides and policies below:
if you have done the full visible policy compliance and you are still in misrepresentation suspension, the issue is almost never on the customer-facing pages anymore. it is in one of these three places that are easy to miss:
structured data drift. shopify themes sometimes emit Product schema with slightly different values than the rendered HTML. compare what your /products/your-product page returns when crawled (use any free schema validator) against what your visible page shows. mismatches in availability, price, or brand here will silently fail trust checks.
domain history. if your domain or your business name has been associated with a previously suspended account, or if the whois country differs from your declared business country, you can be in a “trust history” bucket that does not get reinstated by site fixes alone. this rarely gets surfaced in support replies.
feed-page locale mismatch. for EU stores running in english, the feed often goes in english but the product pages render in the visitor language. google may be crawling from a US/UK IP and seeing english, while your declared target country is romania. that is a misrepresentation trigger because the page google sees is not the page a romanian shopper sees.
worth running each through systematically before the next review cycle.