A merchant’s Google Ads account was suspended for “misrepresentation” after running successfully for three weeks, despite initial approval from a Google account manager. The suspension occurred because they created a separate US-focused website (littlewoolshopusa.com) alongside their main UK site.
Key Issues Identified:
Multiple currencies displayed on the same URL triggered policy violations
Operating separate domains for different markets raised red flags
Email addresses and contact information didn’t match the US domain
Lack of reviews specific to the US website reduced trust score
Attempted Solutions:
Initially tried using Shopify’s multifeed app with a second Google Merchant Center account (also got suspended)
Reviewed all Google policies and updated website content, contact pages, and email addresses
Removed references to the UK domain from the US site
Outcome:
The suspension was eventually lifted after making comprehensive policy-aligned changes, though the exact fix remained unclear. However, suspensions kept recurring unpredictably despite passing both automated and manual reviews. The merchant ultimately abandoned the separate US domain approach and consolidated everything into one Shopify site using Markets functionality. They relied on Facebook ads during the suspension periods, as Google provided no specific explanations and appeal wait times grew increasingly longer.
Summarized with AI on October 28.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
Hoping someone can help. We setup a website for our USA customers www.littlewoolshopusa.com so we can provide a more country specific experience for them. All was setup and running well. We setup Google Ads with the help of a google account manager who assured us everything was setup within policies as we were concerned about this. The Google ad account was verified and ads run for around 3 weeks. Suddenly we had a notification saying our account had been suspended due to misrepresentation after a manual check. The notification was unhelpful and provided no information and we have tried to tweak things on the website and requested a review twice and has still failed to get it lifted, our account manager has also done a runner despite them saying they would try and find out why. Is there anyone who could take a look to see if they can figure out what the problem is?
Our main website is with a different provider and they don’t support multiple currency and lack on the international front overall. Due to a number of complications with changing provider we decided not to move our UK site over to shopify and decided a different website for USA would be the best decision for us at the moment. When setting up our Google accounts we specifically asked Google beforehand if this setup would be the correct way to do it and told them the situation and they told us as long as we are not setting up two accounts for the exact same domain it would be fine so it’s frustrating this has happened.
So if we keep the domain as it is due to the complications mentioned above and change to the other shopify app do you believe this would be the best course of action based on our situation? Is there a reason this could still be suspended? we have competitors who have done the exact same thing and don’t appear to have any issues advertising on google.
We did try to setup the USA site with dollars as the default currency but it appears shopify will only allow you to do this if your business address is in the USA. Unless I’ve missed something?
When you set up your markets and domains you should be able to set them so that US market is assigned to say, littlewoolshopusa.com but UK market is assigned to uk.littlewoolshopusa.com.
This way there will be one-to-one URL ↔ Currency/Price relationship.
Currently it looks like this (I just clicked the link) – see where misrepresentation can be found?
I’ve just spoken to Shopify and have managed to disable the UK market and set USA to the primary market. Would this remove the need for a subdomain?
With this new development what would you recommend to do about the google shopping suspension? Currently it says in the Shopify google app that our target country is United Kingdom but in Google Shopping it’s set to USA. Now i have successfully removed UK from our store i can resetup the shopify google app to United States. Could this be what was causing the issue? or are we likely to still have an issue.
If you can only target using a different top level domain, and you have not enabled an advanced google merchant center account. Then the success rate is harder and you will have to have a high trust score.
Make sure to have a lot more reviews, and that the reviews are from sales made on that specific website.
Make sure the email address matches your domain name. Not littlewoolshop.com
You will have more issues, so make sure to check the policies and guides below and compare them against your website and business:
You mention setting up an advanced google merchant account. Currently our UK site is connected to a different merchant account and we have ads running that are being managed by a third party company. Are you saying we can just change the UK account to advanced setup and connect the new website in with that one? Would this be the correct way to do things or is this likely to end up causing issues and will end up getting our UK ads account also suspended? We originally asked Google what the best way to setup was and they are the ones that said a separate account would be better but it appears not even google employees know how the system works. We currently spend a lot on google ads on our UK site and have very good return so obviously would not want to risk effecting this. We are a little confused by it all and have no clue what is our best options as this point.
As you already created the 2nd GMC account, it is not recommended creating another account using GMC Advanced, as that is seen as circumventing policy violation.
The correct way forward, is to find all possible reasons for suspension in your website, business, and account. This can only be done by checking the policies and guides, and comparing them against your business.
Google, while they may sound authoritive about the subject, they are not the people that deal with Google Shopping on a daily basis, they just reply with pre-build templates. Google is not a source for correct info.
Thank you for all your help. I went with your initial suggestion and created a second merchant centre account with the new feed app which did then get suspended as well. So i went through all the links provided in your previous post and put it into chat gpt and also went through all our policies, delivery pages, contact pages changing whatever it flagged as potential misrepresentation. I also changed any mention of our other domain and our email address to a new one dedicated to the usa site. Not sure which change fixed the issue but i have now finally received an email this morning saying the suspension has been removed. Just hoping it sticks and they don’t change their mind!
Unfortunately, we had a bit of a nightmare with this. We removed everything we could think of, and while Google would lift the suspension on appeal, it kept coming back. There didn’t seem to be any consistency—sometimes it passed an automated review, other times a manual one, but the suspension always returned regardless.
Each time we appealed, the wait time got longer and longer, and even when the account was manually reviewed, nobody could give us a straight answer about what the actual problem was. We suspect the issue may have been linked to the domain itself as we had “USA” in it. In the end, we decided to simplify everything by moving our main website over to Shopify and merging everything together and using markets. As a result, we’ve closed our Google accounts for the USA domain entirely.
I’m guessing it won’t work? I thought so, they’re just really frustrating for the fact that everything is automated.. no way you can speak to the ads support on the phone call. I’m just tired
Sadly not, the impression I got from support via email was that they didn’t even have the information either. It’s just a case of trying to work out what is causing their bot to suspend you and removing every mention of it from the site. We just relied on Facebook ads for sales as we weren’t getting anywhere.
It depends on the reason they have suspended you, ours was for misrepresentation which appears to be more difficult to get lifted than some of their other reasons.
