Celebird Product Search Disapproval Checklist

Google Shopping (Google Product Search) disapproval and suspensions within the Google Merchant Center can be due to a wide variety of simple or complex issues; most disapproval issues fall into four broad categories.

1. The data being submitted.
2. The website.
3. Types of items.
4. Item supply-chain.

The last two issues can be especially problematic.

If you contact Google using their official Disapproved data feeds or items form, but Google continually selects the same similar or generic response, over and over again, or indicating to "review the program policies" or does not respond after a requested clarification, then this may indicate that Google has made a final decision or the issues remain unresolved with respect to the types of items or item supply-chain.

Also, depending on what Google determines is the seriousness of a violation, the frequency of violations, or the type of violation, especially if others may be trying to circumvent a similar policy, Google may choose not to give any details about a disapproval or suspension and may not reconsider items from the website.

However, most disapproval issues are not so dire.

Many issues have rather simple fixes such as submitting a valid availability value.

Other issues have slightly more complex fixes, such as changing how a price is displayed on a website.

Website related disapproval issues can involve more far-reaching changes, such as removing multiple add-to-cart buttons or displaying fewer items on the link landing page.

Disapproved can sometimes be accompanied by an Awaiting Review or Pending Review status. This usually means something has triggered the need for a manual inspection. This does not mean anything is wrong; but rather, a timeout is required until someone can manually review any potential issues. This often happens when uploading a new feed to a new target country for example. A disapproval can occur after the review however.

Disapproval can also be for multiple issues -- with the data, items, and website.

The following Google Shopping disapproval and suspension checklist may help you to narrow the issues that are being flagged.

Many policy disapproval issues can be unclear. In those cases, the best course is to do nothing until you know what the problem is by contacting Google directly and asking for clarification and guidance. Then, use this checklist as a guide after Google has been contacted.

Spending time attempting to remedy all the numerous possible problems listed here can be time wasted if the disapproval is unclear or cannot be easily fixed such as in the case of many supply-chain related violations.

More importantly perhaps, the disapproval checklist may help you prevent disapproval, lengthy review, or suspension issues, before they occur or prevent items from being rejected. Any one single item not conforming to all Google's rules and policies can result in all items removed from the listings or the entire website, account, or marketplace sub-account being suspended.

1.  Using any promotional text whatsoever -- such as shipping or store details, guarantees, billing, payment, sales or marketing information -- or any information that is unrelated to the item's physical details of look, feel, taste, smell, sound, or how the item might be used;  any non-standard capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, or symbols;  using any HTML, entities, special or proprietary symbols, URLs, CSS, or scripts;  any comparisons to other products; any details about other products, accessories, or similar items available; adding any references to internal categorization systems or navigational breadcrumbs; using any gimmicky repetition or keyword stuffing within any data submitted -- or any spam techniques anyplace on the website.
2.  Price not matching the website exactly or price not including VAT;
3.  Price not including VAT displayed on the website link landing-page or price not including VAT within the submitted data feed;
4.  Price not for the minimum quantity -- minimum number of items sold;
5.  Price not the most prominent price on the landing page;
6.  Price not exactly matching the landing-page displayed price -- for all users in all locations at all times;
7.  Price not exactly matching the default add-to-cart price;
8.  Unclear or missing an add-to-cart button on the page;
9.  Unclear which item on the page is the submitted item;
10.  Unclear product price, image, or availability, on the website landing-page;
11.  Insecure e-commerce (checkout) or payment flow.
12.  Insecure customer data collection such as during any phase of checkout;
13.  Insecure, improper, deceptive, or unclear e-commerce (checkout) that may include pop-ups, frames, redirects, or any deceptive or unclear billing or payment flow.
14.  Invalid global-trade values (gtin, mpn, brand);
15.  Improper, missing, or misleading availability; for example, in stock items that cannot be ordered or cannot be in-transit to the customer in 3 business-days or less;
16.  Improper, missing, or misleading condition; for example, new items that are not in original packaging with all original packaging materials from the manufacturer; for example, vintage and antique items are considered used.
17.  Improper, misleading, or no shipping or tax -- in settings or in the feed;
18.  Improper images or images with text or watermarks or logos;
19.  Improper images that are too small (~ 90x90) or too large (~ 700x700) or poor quality; most item images should be approximately 250x250 pixels, while apparel items should be 400x400 pixels, but most images should not be much larger, with respect to most websites, to avoid crawl issues; pixel size for quality issues usually relate to the product image itself, not necessarily the background; whereas crawl issues usually relate to the file size.
20.  Improper currency or language for a target-country;
21.  Improper currency or language during e-commerce checkout;
22.  Improper or inaccurate or automated language translation;
23.  Improper or inaccurate language translation during e-commerce checkout;
24.  Improper or inaccurate target-country details in the feed or on the website;
25.  Improper or inaccurate google_product_category value for the physical item or target-country;
26.  Broken links or improper URLs not showing items or not showing images;
27.  Broken links with un-escaped characters such as spaces;
28.  Broken links or links that redirect or with pop-ups;
29.  Broken web-servers or websites entirely or partially under construction or not functioning.
30.  Broken websites or broken web-servers not responding properly or fast enough to all Googlebot or Googlebot-image crawls, at all times;
31.  Broken website or web-server robots.txt files that cause Googlebot or Googlebot-image crawls to fail;
32.  Broken websites or web-servers down for any length of time for any reason;
33.  Submitting variant items without proper variant attributes;
34.  Submitting similar items from multiple cookie-cutter sites;
35.  Submitting items already submitted from another site;
36.  Submitting items already submitted from another website or marketplace such as addoway, amazon, artfire, bonanza, cafepress, ebay, ebid, ecrater, etsy, nextag, pricegrabber, ruby lane, tias, zazzle, etc.
37.  Submitting items previously submitted by a marketplace;
38.  Submitting items from a marketplace that is suspended;
39.  Submitting items with suspect or disallowed supply-chains;
40.  Submitting items you do not legally own or do not have the rights from the legal owner to submit;
41.  Submitting content you do not legally own or do not have the rights from the legal owner to use;
42.  Submitting items with affiliate or drop ship supply-chains;
43.  Submitting duplicate items from affiliate or drop ship supply-chains or their accounts;
44.  Submitting items from cookie-cutter, affiliate, or drop ship websites;
45.  Submitting adult items not marked as adult;
46.  Submitting words that violate (Google AdWords) trademark policies -- for linked Google AdWords accounts or a ProductAds disapproval;
47.  Submitting words that are not allowed, are associated with disallowed types of items, or that may be non-family-friendly;
48.  Submitting disallowed items or disallowed types of items such as real estate, vehicles, muscle-enhancing supplements, unsubstantiated remedies, spam, services, gaming related items, items disallowed within a specific target-country or state, etc.;
49.  Submitting items or displaying items on the website, that violate any Google AdWords policy -- for linked Google AdWords accounts or a ProductAds disapproval;
50.  Submitting items that might be non-family friendly -- for a U.S. registered feed item;
51.  Submitting duplicate items or unique items from nearly-duplicate sites;
52.  Submitting variant items improperly;
53.  Submitting an exemption improperly; an exemption from global-trade-data (Unique Product Identifiers) is submitted by using an identifier_exists attribute with a value of FALSE for the item;
54.  Submitting without an exemption (identifier_exists set FALSE)  if the required global-trade data (gtin, mpn, brand) for the type of item does not exist -- for example, bundling groups of products or self-made or handmade items.
55.  Submitting without an exemption (identifier_exists set FALSE) if global-trade data does not exist for the target-country -- exemptions (identifier_exists set FALSE) are per target country per item;
56.  Submitting without an exemption (identifier_exists set FALSE) if global-trade data does not exist for the item category (exemptions are per target country per type of item -- apparel, books, etc.);
57.  Submitting with an exemption (identifier_exists set FALSE) if the (required) global-trade data does currently exist for the item;
58.  Submitting items that cannot be shipped throughout the registered target-country or cannot be shipped with a direct-to-the-consumer shipping rate (for example, ship-to-store is not allowed);
59.  Submitting multiple target-country feeds using the same feed data -- link landing-page, price, id, etc.;
60.  Missing a required product image for an item;
61.  Missing required attributes for variants;
62.  Missing required attributes for a specific target-country;
63.  Missing required attributes with proper values such as
    id, availability, link, image_link, condition, price, etc;
    
64.  Missing required attributes for the type of item such as gender for U.S. apparel items;
65.  Missing conspicuous, transparent, and easily located links on the website, to clear, transparent, accurate, and complete, business information, such as billing terms and conditions, return and refund policies, and proper contact information that typically includes company name, physical street-level address, land-line telephone number, and working email;
    
66.  Not claiming the website or losing a website claim:
67.  Creating multiple accounts in response to a disapproval or suspension;
68.  Spreadsheets with descriptions on multiple lines;
69.  Spreadsheets that add quotes after re-saving;
70.  Spreadsheets that apply scientific-notation formats;
71.  Spreadsheets that are not saved as text (.txt) tab-delimited;
72.  Both spreadsheets and XML files can be an indirect cause of disapproval since improperly formatted files or files with too many syntax errors can cause processing to falsely read correct data; always view .txt and .xml feed files within a browser, notepad, or file editor, to check the saved data.

Please note: I am not a Google employee; the checklist is based on observations as a Top Contributor within Google's help forum and  public documentation. If you have any comments please post here rather than in Google's forums.