To ensure the success of your products and provide a good experience for people who are shopping, follow the product data specification and data quality requirements when submitting your product data to Google. If your data doesn't meet the data quality requirements, your items or your entire Merchant Center account are subject to disapproval. Disapproved items can’t be shown in Shopping ads, free listings, free local listings, and local inventory ads. So, it’s important that you identify the reason for disapproval and take the necessary steps to fix the issue and get approval for these items.
This article explains the different types of account-level disapprovals, how they can affect your account, and the steps you should take if you have disapproved items in your account or if your account is suspended. Learn more about item-level disapprovals for product data violations
Warnings
Merchant Center accounts are reviewed regularly. If it's found that your product data isn't in compliance with the product specification requirements, you’ll receive a warning email with examples of the issues that you need to fix, and a timeframe in which to fix them. The warning period will also be displayed in your Merchant Center account on the Diagnostics page, under “Account issues”. You're eligible to request one courtesy review by using the "Request review" button. During the warning period, your items will continue to appear in Shopping ads, free listings, free local listings, and local inventory ads.
Account suspension
If you don't request a review during the warning period, your data will be reviewed once more at the end of the warning period. If all of your issues are resolved, the warning will be lifted, and your Shopping ads, free listings, free local listings, and local inventory ads will continue to show as normal. If any of the issues aren't resolved, your account will be suspended and all of your items will be disabled from appearing in Shopping ads, free listings, free local listings, and local inventory ads for that feed. You’ll receive an email notification that your account has been suspended containing all of the relevant information about the data quality issues and the next steps. Your suspension status will be shown on the Home and the Diagnostics pages of your Merchant Center account.
Keep in mind that account suspensions are specific to each target country. If you target multiple countries, your unaffected products and feeds will continue to show.
Preemptive item disapproval
Warnings regarding price and availability mismatch between the feed and the landing pages result in preemptive item disapproval instead of an account suspension. Preemptive item disapproval (PID) is still considered account-level enforcement and an account review is required to fully resolve the issues. It's called "preemptive item disapproval" because Google errs on the side of caution and disapproves items that are likely to violate requirements (for example, items that have a different price on the landing page and throughout the checkout process compared to the feed). While you resolve your product data quality issues for items that don't meet requirements, you can still show other products from your account that meet the requirements.
Example
Suppose a manual review of your product data shows that you’ve submitted multiple items where the price provided on the landing page doesn’t match the price in the feed. You’ll receive a warning email with examples of the items where attribute values for price didn't match the values provided on the landing pages during the time of the review, as well as a timeframe in which to update those and other products that may be affected. If you fail to make changes within the given timeframe, the items with mismatched pricing will be disapproved, as will any other items in your account that likely also don't meet the requirements. You’ll be able to see a list of all the impacted items using the link provided in the initial email.
How to resolve data quality issues
- Remove or fix any items that don’t meet the product data specification requirements. Users who’ve opted in to mandatory service announcement email notifications will receive an email with details about the violation, including examples. Follow these instructions and update any additional items that violate the same product data quality requirements, even if they aren't included in the email.
- Use the following steps to resubmit your product data:
- From the navigation panel, click Products, and then click All Products from the page menu.
- Review the information that was most recently submitted to Merchant Center, and compare this data to your live website.
- Submit your product data again.
- Once you have fixed the issues:
- Warning period: Request a courtesy review by using the "Request review" button in Merchant Center, or wait until the end of the warning period for the review to happen automatically. You are entitled to one courtesy review during the warning period.
- Account suspended or in preemptive item disapproval: Request a review by using the "Request review" button in Merchant Center (if applicable).
- Make sure your product data meets the requirements to prevent disapprovals. Using the examples of the violating items listed in the email notification as a reference, you can plan an approach to avoid violating the product data requirements in the future.
Request review button
If your account has received a warning, has been suspended, or if any of your items have been preemptively disapproved, you can request a review using the "Request review" button. For each target country you’ll see one "Request review button" for all open violations, and you’ll only be able to request a review if there are no other pending requests for that country. If your account has multiple data quality issues in the same target country, the review will apply to all issues for that target country.
Instructions for requesting a review
- Navigate to the Diagnostics page of your Merchant Center account.
- In the navigation panel, click Products and choose Diagnostics.
- On the Diagnostics page, navigate to "Account issues".
- Locate the account-level issue that you would like to have reviewed.
- Make sure that there are in-stock products uploaded and all issues for the affected target country are resolved.
- Click Request review.
- Read the pop-up window to ensure that you understand the review process, and its requirements and limitations.
- Check the box and click Request review.
Once you request a review, the status of the associated issue will change to “Under review”. Review requests can take up to 7 days to complete. You’ll receive an email notification once the review has been completed.
Cool down period
If your account is already suspended or has a preemptive item disapproval (PID), you’ll have 2 opportunities to request an account review before a cool down period is initiated for further reviews.
The process will then continue as follows:
- If your issues aren’t resolved by the second review attempt, a one-week cool down period will begin. During this time, the review button will be disabled.
- With each unsuccessful review afterwards, a progressive one-week cool down period may be applied.
- During this cool down period, your account will remain suspended or in a preemptive item disapproval state. You won’t be able to request another review during this time.
- Use the cool down period to review and fix your account, data and website issue(s) as support may be limited until your issues are addressed.
- After the cool down period passes, the "Request review" button will be available again.
- You can see the end date for any cool down period by navigating to the "Diagnostics" page in Merchant Center and clicking the “Account issues” tab.