Suspended Google Merchant Center — first aid

The message "Your account has been suspended due to misrepresentation" is one of the most dreaded emails an e-shop owner can get from Google. The worst part is that Google never tells you specifically what it objects to — you get a link to the general policies, and it's up to you to find the problem yourself. The good news: the ban can be fixed, and the vast majority of e-shops make it back into Google Shopping. The founder of EshopMedic went through this whole process himself — and his verified playbook is exactly what you'll find below.

Why Google suspends accounts

Misrepresentation doesn't mean you're cheating. It means that Google (its algorithm, not a human) has judged your site as potentially untrustworthy. The most common triggers:

• Price mismatches — the price in your feed differs from the price on your site or in Merchant Center. By far the most common reason for a ban.
• Missing or incomplete company information — without an operator name, company registration number, address and contact details, Google has no way to verify you.
• Trust red flags — links to unrelated third-party sites, copy pasted from another e-shop, a foreign phone prefix or a foreign address on a store selling domestically.
• Unrealistic promises — "free delivery within 24 hours" or permanent 80% discounts that don't match reality.
• A new account with no history — Google judges fresh domains and accounts more strictly, because it knows nothing about you.

The first-aid checklist

Work through these points in this order. Don't fix just one thing — during the review, Google checks everything again.

1. Align your prices everywhere. Price on the product page = price mentioned in the description or copy = price in the feed = price in Merchant Center. Also check that the price doesn't change after adding to cart (different VAT, hidden fees). A single discrepancy is enough for a ban — tackle this first.
2. Remove links and mentions of other websites. A third-party domain in the footer (typically left over from a template or your web developers), copy pasted from another e-shop, logos of unrelated projects. Google reads all of it as a signal that the site isn't yours or that you're misleading people about who's selling.
3. Complete your footer. The operator (company name or the owner's name), company registration number, billing address, email and phone, links to your terms and conditions, returns/complaints policy and GDPR privacy policy. None of it may be missing.
4. Check the footer on mobile. Open your site on a phone and make sure the whole footer is visible, with nothing cropping or covering it. Google crawls your site primarily as a mobile device — a footer visible only on desktop is invisible to it.
5. Review phone numbers and "foreign" signals. Selling in one country? Your phone number should have that country's dialing code, your address should be local, and your prices in the local currency. A foreign dialing code, an overseas address or a different currency — Google treats all of these as risk signals that the store is run from another country.
6. Fix your cookie banner. The banner must display correctly and must not cover or block the page content. If the crawler or a reviewer sees a gray overlay with a cookie window instead of your product, there's nothing to approve. Test in an incognito window on both desktop and mobile.
7. Match your contact details with Merchant Center. The company name, address and website in MC settings (Business information) must match what's on your site. A mismatch = another trust red flag.
8. Make your terms, returns, refunds and shipping easy to find. Dedicated pages, reachable in at most two clicks, with specific timeframes and shipping prices. "Free shipping" only if it truly applies without conditions — otherwise state the conditions clearly (e.g. "free shipping over €20").
9. Check the product identifiers in your feed. GTIN (EAN) wherever one exists; otherwise brand + MPN. Never invent GTINs — that's a product-disapproval reason all by itself.
10. Report availability truthfully. "In stock" in the feed must mean in stock on the site. Mark out-of-stock products correctly or temporarily remove them from the feed.
11. Verify HTTPS across the whole site. A valid certificate, no pages (especially cart and checkout) on http, no browser warnings about mixed content.
12. Turn off automatic redirects. A user coming from an ad must land exactly on the product page from the feed — no redirect to the homepage, another domain, or a pop-up interstitial.
13. Click through the entire checkout. Place a test order from cart to confirmation. A broken checkout, a payment error message, or an order that can't be completed = an untrustworthy store in Google's eyes.
14. If you're stuck, write to Merchant Center support. Via chat or email in the MC help section. Support won't tell you the exact reason for the ban, but they can hint more specifically at where to look — and that can save you weeks of guessing.

How to request a review the right way

1. Fix everything at once, not one thing at a time. The review isn't a dialogue — Google re-checks the whole site, and if it finds a single problem, you're rejected. Only move on once the entire checklist is clean.
2. Wait until Google fetches your new feed. This is the step almost everyone skips, and it's exactly where whole weeks get lost. Google may be working with a cached, old version of your feed — if you fixed prices or availability but MC still has the old feed, the review will end in rejection even though the site itself is already fine. In Merchant Center, check the data source's last fetch time, trigger a manual fetch if needed, and verify that the corrected values actually show on your products.
3. Only then submit the review request. You'll find it in Merchant Center in the account issues section (diagnostics / account status), where the suspension has a button to request a review.
4. Write to support at the same time. Briefly: what was probably wrong, what exactly you fixed, and that the feed is up to date. A factual list of fixes raises the odds that the reviewer doesn't miss anything.
5. Expect days to weeks of waiting and above all: don't submit the request repeatedly "just in case." The number of attempts is limited, and after a rejection you wait for the next chance. One wasted request with an unfixed problem or a stale feed = easily an extra month of delay.

How to prevent the ban

Most of the items on the checklist can be caught before Google suspends your account — the problem is that as an owner running the shop day to day, you simply don't see them. That's exactly why EshopMedic's anti-ban check exists: it automatically watches the consistency of your required information, the completeness of your footer, the cookie banner, risky claims, and the other points Google goes after most often.

Frequently asked questions