I’m hoping someone in the Shopify Community has solved this problem.
We sell books in multiple formats: print, ebook, and audiobook. Google Merchant Center only accepts physical products, which is understandable. The problem is that Google’s automated review system appears to flag our physical book listings simply because the product pages also mention that ebook and audiobook editions are available.
Those digital editions are a significant part of our business, so removing them from our website isn’t an option. We’re not trying to submit ebooks or audiobooks to Google Shopping. We simply want to exclude them from the Merchant Center feed while continuing to sell them on our site.
Has anyone successfully configured Shopify to:
- Exclude ebooks and audiobooks from the Google & YouTube sales channel or Merchant Center feed?
- Keep physical books in the feed while leaving references to ebook and audiobook editions on the product page?
- Use product tags, collections, metafields, feed rules, or another method to accomplish this?
Google Support keeps telling us to remove references to digital editions, but that doesn’t solve the actual problem. I’m looking for the correct technical implementation that allows us to continue selling all three formats while only submitting eligible physical products to Google Merchant Center.
I’d appreciate hearing from anyone who has encountered this issue and found a workable solution.
Hey @casacarlini ,
I don’t think the feed itself is necessarily the only issue here.
If your ebooks and audiobooks are separate Shopify products, the cleanest approach is usually to exclude those products from the Google & YouTube sales channel or from your Merchant Center feed if you’re using a feed management app while keeping only the physical books published to Google.
However if the physical product page itself prominently references digital editions, Google’s automated review systems may still interpret the landing page as promoting products that aren’t eligible for Google Shopping. In that case, simply filtering the feed may not completely resolve the issue because Google also evaluates the landing page associated with the submitted product.
One approach that I’ve seen work is to keep the physical book as the submitted product, while presenting ebook and audiobook editions as separate products that are linked from the page rather than being treated as purchasable options for the submitted item. That allows you to continue selling all formats while keeping the Merchant Center listing focused on the eligible physical product.
I’m interested to hear whether anyone in the community has successfully implemented this using Shopify’s Google & YouTube channel alone, or whether a third party feed management app was required.
If this helped, please mark it as the solution so others can find it more easily.
Thank You !
Hi @casacarlini
You can limit what is pushed to Google if your YouTube and Google sales channel automatically syncs your whole product catalog:
Make a “Google Shopping Feed” collection in Shopify, either manually or automatically, and include only your physical books (or those that don’t raise the digital policy alert).
Open the Google & YouTube sales channel app by going to your Shopify admin.
To select which collection to sync, look for the product listing settings or channel visibility area.
Limit the sync to your specific physical book collection instead of your store’s whole inventory.
This completely avoids the automatic flagging problem and preserves your whole store inventory for human customers by preventing Google from ever seeing the product pages that make reference to ebooks or audiobooks.
If it worked please mark my comment as solution.
Thanks!
Thanks for your response. We’ve already excluded all ebooks and audiobooks from our Merchant Center feed using a feed management app, so I believe the issue is the landing page itself.
Our print book pages mention that the title is also available as an ebook and audiobook. Removing those references isn’t practical since digital editions are a significant part of our business. I’m hoping there’s a technical solution that satisfies Google’s requirements without forcing publishers to hide legitimate product offerings.
Steve’s point about separate products is the one I’d chase, and I think it does apply to you. I had a look at your catalog and the ebook and audiobook aren’t separate products, they’re variants. 423 of your 480 products carry a Format option with Audiobook, Ebook, Paperback and Hardcover on the same product, so all four share one URL and one item group. That would explain why filtering at the product level changed nothing.
Worth knowing where the line actually falls, because it answers the thing you’re worried about. Saying in the copy that a title is also available as an ebook is fine. Offering the ebook as a buyable option on the exact URL you submitted is the part that trips the review. So you don’t have to strip the references. Splitting the digital editions into their own products and linking to them from the print page gets you the same shop for customers.
One small thing while you’re in there: 9 of your digital variants are still ticked as physical products (Pudd’nhead Wilson ebook and audiobook, Wuthering Heights audiobook, Lady Susan audiobook and a few more), so even a variant level filter would skip those.
Yes, I understand what’s happening now, and your explanation clarified the issue.
That said, creating separate listings for every book format is not a practical solution. It would mean multiplying our catalog by 3x or 4x, creating unnecessary duplication and management overhead, all to accommodate what appears to be Google’s overly rigid review process.
Our variants model is no different from how many ecommerce sites operate. For example, we sell t-shirts with multiple options for color and size under a single product listing. A customer chooses the variation they want, and the system handles the fulfillment. Books are no different in that regard: a reader is simply choosing between available formats.
It also seems counterintuitive—and frankly ironic—that digital products like ebooks and audiobooks would be treated as a problem. Google is a technology company operating in a digital age where digital content is a core part of how people consume information. Excluding or penalizing legitimate digital offerings feels out of step with the reality of modern commerce.
Regarding the examples you mentioned, such as Wuthering Heights, those listings are created as the different formats become available. If the ebook or audiobook is released first, that format is added to the existing product listing, and the print editions are added afterward when they become available. That’s the natural workflow for a publishing company and reflects how our catalog actually develops over time.
So rather than restructuring our entire catalog, we’ll likely need to address this directly with Google or find a workaround—perhaps one that defaults visitors to the print format first when they land on a product page, while still allowing customers to select digital formats if they choose.
I appreciate you helping clarify what’s triggering the review. The challenge is finding a solution that works with Google’s requirements without forcing us into a catalog structure that doesn’t make sense for our business or our customers.
One caution on the print-first default idea: Google’s review looks at what a shopper can buy on the submitted URL, not which variant loads first, so preselecting the paperback would still leave the ebook as a purchase option on that same page. The setups that pass are the ones where the submitted URL offers only physical formats. That is why the split-products route keeps coming up, painful as it is, because it is the URL, not the catalog structure, that Google evaluates.
HI @casacarlini
One approach that has worked for some merchants is to separate physical books from digital formats at the feed level rather than changing the product page itself.
If your print, ebook, and audiobook are separate Shopify products, you can exclude the digital products from the Google & YouTube sales channel using product availability settings, tags, or collections (depending on how your feed is configured). That way, only the physical books are submitted to Merchant Center while the digital editions remain available on your storefront.
If all three formats are presented on the same product page, it becomes more3 challenging because Google’s automated review may interpret the page as promoting digital goods, even if only the physical variant is in the feed. In that case, it may be worth reviewing how the product data is structured. for example, using separate products for each format and linking them throiugh related products instead of combining everything on a single listing.
I’d be interested to hear if anyone has found a reliable workaround that satisfies google’s review process without removing references to ebook and audiobook editions, as this seems like a common issue for publishers selling multiple formats.
Hi,
The cleanest setup is to treat each format as a separate Shopify product, not as variants of one product:
- Print edition — physical product
- Ebook — digital product
- Audiobook — digital product
Then publish only the print products to the Google & YouTube sales channel. Shopify allows merchants to manually or bulk-change which products are available to that channel; tags or metafields alone do not control whether a product is synced.
The print product URL submitted to Merchant Center should open directly to a page where:
- The physical edition is the only purchasable format
- Its price and availability match the feed
- Its structured data describes the physical book
- No cheaper digital option is selected or presented as the primary offer
Google requires the submitted offer, price and landing-page product to match, and warns that variant URLs should load with the submitted variant already selected.
You can keep the ebook and audiobook products on Shopify while removing their Google & YouTube channel availability. Google explicitly excludes ebooks and digital books from Shopping promotion.
The difficult part is mentioning digital editions on the print landing page. A small text link such as “Digital editions available separately” pointing to separate product pages may be less ambiguous than showing format selectors and digital prices, but it still cannot guarantee approval, especially since Google Support has already instructed you to remove those references.
Feed rules or excluded_destination can stop specific offers from appearing in Shopping ads or free listings, but they will not correct an ambiguous physical-product landing page.
Best of luck.
I’ve seen this happen with stores that sell both physical and digital products. A simple fix is to keep print, ebook, and audiobook as separate Shopify products and use a tag or metafield to exclude the digital products from the Google & YouTube feed.
Also check your structured data (JSON-LD), because Google may be reading the ebook and audiobook offers from the product page even if they’re not in the feed.
Are the three formats set up as separate products or as variants of one product?
Hi @casacarlini,
Building on clawmama’s point, yes, the purchasable Format picker at the submitted URL is what triggers the rejection, not the copy mentioning digital editions. That distinction matters: “also available as ebook” in plain text is fine by Google’s policy; Ebook and Audiobook appearing as selectable, purchasable variants on the same Add to Cart form is what fails the automated review.
So your feed exclusion was correct but only solves half the problem. The physical variant’s submitted URL still lets shoppers buy digital formats, and Google’s review sees them as available for purchase.
The proxy page path VikashJ mentioned is real. Here’s how it actually works: create a custom Shopify page template (Online Store > Themes > Edit code > Add template > Page) that pulls in the product via all_products['your-handle'] and renders only variants where requires_shipping == true. Each physical title gets a Shopify page at /pages/book-title-print using that template, with the product handle stored in a page metafield. Your actual product pages stay completely untouched.
Then in your feed app, override the link attribute on each physical item to point to that proxy URL instead of the default /products/ URL. Google’s bot hits the proxy page, sees only Paperback and Hardcover as purchasable, passes review. Shoppers browsing your site hit the real product page with all four formats.
The overhead is real but lower than full product duplication. It’s one template, and the pages plus metafields can be created in bulk via the Admin API or a third-party import tool. If only a subset of your catalog is actively getting flagged, starting with those titles is reasonable.
Which feed app are you using? The custom link override capability varies a lot between them.
In google merchant center, check if any ebooks are listed, maybe you listed them as a variant. If so, use attribute rules to remove the products using the excluded destination attribute.
First enable advanced data feed management in Google Merchant Center > add ons
Then go to data sources > click on your feeds > attributes > and add a new rule for excluded destination, and use if title contains ebook (as an example)
Then exclude from all marketing methods, shopping ads, free listings, display etc.
Then, if Google continues to complain, request a review for that specific product.