Process Flow
Animated overview of the full workflow
TL;DR
Merchant Center disapprovals prevent your products from appearing in Shopping ads. Common reasons include price mismatches between your feed and website, missing required attributes (like GTIN, shipping, or tax information), policy violations, landing page issues, and image quality problems. Fix the underlying issue, request a review, and allow 1-3 business days for re-approval.
Step-by-Step Guide
Follow these 3 steps to complete this guide
- 1
Checking Disapprovals
In Merchant Center, go to Products > Diagnostics. You will see a breakdown of items with issues, warnings, and disapprovals. Click into each issue type to see affected products and the specific reason.
- 2
Most Common Disapprovals
**Price mismatch:** Your feed shows a different price than your website. Fix by ensuring your feed updates frequently (at least daily) and matches your live website prices exactly, including currency. **Missing GTIN/MPN:** Google requires a Global Trade Item Number or Manufacturer Part Number for most products. Add these to your feed. If your product genuinely does not have a GTIN (custom or handmade items), set the 'identifier_exists' attribute to 'no.' **Landing page not crawlable:** Google cannot access your product pages. Ensure pages are not blocked by robots.txt, do not require login, and load correctly. **Shipping/tax not configured:** Set up shipping and tax rates in Merchant Center settings. These must be accurate for your target country. **Image quality:** Images must show the actual product, not placeholder images, watermarks, promotional text overlays, or stock photos that do not match the product. **Policy violations:** Products in restricted categories (healthcare, weapons, adult content) may be disapproved. Review Google's Shopping policies for your product category.
- 3
Requesting a Review
After fixing the issue, click 'Request review' on the affected items. Reviews typically take 1-3 business days. Do not repeatedly request reviews without fixing the underlying issue — this can lead to account-level penalties.
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