How to fix: Unable to do quality & policy checks on product pages

Update your robots.txt file to include user-agents "Googlebot" and "Googlebot-Image" so that your products can show on Google

In this article


Why this issue is happening

For one or more of your products, you've submitted a landing page via the link [link] or link template [link_template] attribute that can’t be accessed by Google and may also not be accessible to Google users. The landing page or the image can't be crawled by Google because robots.txt forbids Google's crawler to download the landing page or the image.

When the landing page linked to your ad or listing is unavailable, users have a bad experience, leading to a bad return on your ad spend. So, we disable your products with unavailable landing pages. These products will remain disapproved and stop showing up in ads and listings until we are able to crawl the landing page.


How to fix your issue

Update the robots.txt file on your web server to allow Google's crawler to fetch the provided landing pages. The robots.txt file can usually be found in the root directory of the web server. For example, http://www.example.com/robots.txt.

In order for us to access your whole site, ensure that your robots.txt file allows both user-agents 'Googlebot' (used for landing pages) and 'Googlebot-image' (used for images) to crawl your full site.

You can allow a full-site crawl by changing your robots.txt file as follows:

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow:

User-agent: Googlebot-image

Disallow:

You can learn more about how to configure robots.txt here.

You can test your current configuration with the URL inspection tool.

Fix products one by one directly in Merchant Center

Step 1 Go to Products in Merchant Center, then select the Needs attention tab.

Step 2 Use the filter icon above the table to find all products affected by your issue.

Step 3 Click on the title of the product you want to fix, then click Edit product.

Step 4 Update your product page link to a URL that can be accessed by Google.

Step 5 Select Save.

Fix multiple products at once

Step 1 Go to Products in Merchant Center, then select the Needs attention tab.

Step 2 Use the filter icon above the table to find all products affected by your issue.

Step 3 Select the Download icon to download a list (.csv) of all affected products for all issues or this particular issue.

Step 4 Cross reference the downloaded list with your uploaded product data, and ensure that for these products the URLs that you’ve submitted using the link [link] attribute lead to valid mobile landing pages.

Step 5 Reupload your corrected product data to Merchant Center via your chosen upload method.


Next steps

After making the requested changes, check that you’ve fixed the issue by making sure the issue is no longer listed on the “Needs attention” page.

Keep in mind: Your change may take 24–72 hours to reflect on the “Needs attention” page.

If you have fixed these issues and updated your products via a new feed upload or the Content API, the errors you receive should disappear within a couple of days. This time allows us to verify that we can crawl the landing pages that are provided, after which the products will start showing up in your Shopping ads and listings again. If you want to speed up the process you can increase Google's crawl rate.

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