An eCommerce Shopify store owner had been using Google Merchant Center for his Shopify Store for 5 months now. He wakes up one morning and finds that Google has suspended his Merchant center account for Misrepresentation of self or product.
What does this mean? Why now after 5 months? What happens to his progress? What happens to his payments on the merchant center account? Will this reflect on his Shopify account? Will his customers be notified?
What happens if my Google Merchant center account is suspended?
If you have ever read “Your Merchant Center account has been suspended”, there is one thing you must first do…
Don’t Panic! We did too.
Google has a lot of rules and guidelines that must be followed. Some of these rules can be easily forgotten or neglected in the flow.
But, this can be resolved. Only in the worst-case scenario, which is very rare, that the account is beyond fix. Either way, what you need not worry about is this:
- Google merchant center account suspension does not change your SEO ranking in any way.
- The traffic to your site is not reduced after suspension.
What will happen is that your listings stop appearing in searches that may lead to a reduction in traffic or SEO ranking for your Shopify site. This means we need to act quickly and do it right this time.
Why does Google suspend my account?
Google has some policies that it expects all its merchants to follow strictly. Google may suspend your account if it detects:
- Counterfeit of brand logo or other information
- Inappropriate content that propagates violence or hatred in any way
- Illegal or product that can cause physical or mental harm to self or anyone.
- Misrepresentation of products
- Inappropriate ad content displayed on your site
- Misuse of ad platforms used on your site that could harm your buyers.
- Misrepresentation of brands or products
- Adult-rated content on the site without permits
- Promotes alcoholic beverages
- Contains copyrighted content
- Content promotes gambling
- Promotes or emotes a political issue
- Lacks trademarks for content
- Catfishing buyers into landing them on the page
How to prevent Google Merchant Center account suspension?
Usually, when Google suspends an account, it reviews it, gives out a warning, and then suspends it. But off late, it suspends an account immediately after the crawlers find something suspicious.
- Your set-up in the initial days must be handled with hawk-eye detailing. Make sure that your product listing and website linking are accurately made during the setup.
- Ensure that your account has the important pages that are mandatory as mentioned by Google guidelines. Pages like the Contact page, Billing terms & conditions, shipping and privacy policy, etc.
- When offering a drop shipping service, ensure that you keep your shipping details updated in both your Shopify and Merchant Center account.
- Your prices on the Shopify website must match with what you mention in the merchant Center account. Google takes tax and fraud issues very seriously.
- Ensure that your shipping costs are updated with other duties and taxes included to avoid a suspension of the account.
4 simple steps to retrieve your account:
- Find the root cause of the suspension with the help of the email Google sends you.
- Fix the problem in the website back-end and in the account. Taking expert help here is advisable.
- Update everything on both the website and the Merchant Center account.
- Drop a detailed mail to Google saying you have made changes on both sides and request for another review and remove the suspension.
Summing Up
One cannot prevent the suspension of the Google Merchant Center because let’s be real… Google has a lot of complicated rules and guidelines, and more hidden in the fine print. Its notorious crawlers can catch anything in seconds and suspend your account anytime. Knowing the guidelines and rules while setting up your Merchant Center Account for Shopify can be very useful to prevent the suspension of your account. Using experts to do this for you increases your chances of preventing a Google Merchant Center suspension.