Google Merchant - Website Needs Improvement

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Topic summary

A shop owner received a suspension notice from Google Merchant Center after being approved for nearly 2 months. Google flagged issues with website quality, citing requirements around domain matching, broken links, placeholder content, and product data consistency.

Key Issues Identified:

  • Inconsistent product image sizing appearing unprofessional
  • Confusing payment options (full payment vs. layaway) displayed on product pages
  • Forced terms and conditions checkbox in cart (policy violation)
  • Missing business details (name, address, email, phone, hours)
  • Website sells digital products (dolls/figures), not physical goods

Main Debate:
Discussion emerged about whether product data must match exactly between the website and Merchant Center feed. One contributor clarified Google’s policy only requires titles to “refer to the same product,” not be identical.

Critical Discovery:
The shop may face permanent rejection because Google Merchant Center requires physical products, and this site appears to sell digital/virtual items.

Status: The original poster removed the checkout checkbox but asked about re-adding it elsewhere. Multiple Google Merchant Center policy guides were shared for reference. A third user also requested help with their own misrepresentation suspension.

Summarized with AI on October 29. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi everyone.

I’ve had my shop open for a couple of months now.

My website:

Dolls.moe

Been selling quite alright, not complaining since its just the start of everything, everything was going fine until 2 days ago got a email from google.

Tried everything, but still not approved.

Been Approved before for almost 2 months, and now suddenly out of nowhere got this.

There was a problem identified with your website. Update your entire website to provide a useful and transparent shopping experience for customers.

Make sure that your website meets the following requirements

  • Your website should have a domain name that matches the uploaded domain name
  • Your entire website shouldn’t have any broken links
  • Your website shouldn’t contain any placeholder images or text
  • The product details and categories should match those that you provide in your product data
  • Your website shouldn’t contain generic information and shouldn’t miss crucial information about products
2

I would first ensure all images are the same size, because now your products are all over the place. Google will see this as unprofessional.

The Full payment and layaway payment, and all the details underneath will also be a reason for suspension. This is confusing, and not a normal eCommerce practice. You can have partial payment checkouts options, but I don’t recommend adding all that info on the product landing page, as currently full payment is selected and then the info below will be considered part of the full payment, which clearly is not.

You are not allowed to force a user to accept terms and conditions in the cart.

Make sure to include your business details, such as business name, address, email, phone, business hours.

You will have more issues, so make sure to check:

https://support.google.com/google-ads/community-video/318699100
https://support.google.com/google-ads/community-guide/304792695
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6150127
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6363310/follow-the-merchant-center-guidelines
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7052112
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/4752265
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/13693865
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6149970
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/9158778
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6150244
https://support.google.com/google-ads/community-guide/241068758

3

Hello @Dollsmoe ; Thanks for sharing your concern:

  1. We need to ensure the domain in the Merchant Center exactly matches the live site.

  2. Google may have detected broken or dead links somewhere on the site. We’ll scan the entire site and fix any errors.

  3. They flagged possible unfinished content. We’ll check every page for anything like Lorem ipsum text or stock placeholder images and remove or replace them.

  4. The products listed on the website must exactly match what’s in your Merchant Center feed (title, price, description, availability, etc.). We’ll double-check for consistency.

  5. Conduct a full audit of your website for broken links and placeholder content.

  6. Ensure all product data matches between your site and Merchant Center.

  7. Update any missing product details.

  8. Check domain setup and Google Merchant Center settings.

Thank you

4

@akshay_bhatt

There is no requirement to match the data between the site and Merchant center.

5

@EmmanuelFlossie ,
Thanks so much for your message , I really appreciate your input.
You’re absolutely right that Google doesn’t require a perfect match between the website and the Merchant Center feed.
However, regarding the line:
The product details and categories should match those that you provide in your product data:

That’s why I mentioned it in my response — just trying to cover all bases.
Again, thank you for sharing your perspective.

6

As explained, there is no such policy where the product details, for example the title need to be the same.

Policy reference: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6324415

Quote: Describe the product shown on your landing page. Make sure your title describes the product that you’re linking to. While the titles you provide for products in your product data don’t always need to be identical to the content on your landing pages, they should refer to the same product.

7

But… is there really a way to add a checkbox for terms and conditions in checkout if we don’t use Plus? Which is overkill for us at 2000 / month

8

I don’t understand your question, but I indicate to remove the checkbox that says accept terms and conditions in the cart. As this is not allowed.

Find whatever setting it is, and uncheck this option.

9

Hello,

I removed the checkbox however,

is there any way of adding the checkbox to the checkout? I don’t want to pay for plus for this functionality

10

  1. If you want to get approved, if you add a terms and condition checkout checkbox requirement at any given time, you may get suspended.

  2. I know nothing about paying for a service to remove this, that sounds like a misunderstanding, not genuine, etc. As you should not need to pay for anything to remove a feature that you have added.

12

Your website will never get approved for Google Merchant Center, because you are not selling physical products.

13

Dear EmmanuelFlossie

could you give me some suggestion about oursite RTST , it is misrespresentation from google since 2 weeks ago, we have to check all site and information ,and we also appeal twice to google . but still not approve from google .

could you give us some idea what is problem over here ? how could we do it ?

14

For example, showing star ratings, when there are no reviews.

For example, no contact form on the contact page.

For example no add to cart button: https://robotbuy.store/products/engineal-pm01

Check the list of guides and policies, to find more issues.