Two messages in Google Merchant Center make merchants nervous more than any other. One is a product issue — Mismatched value (page crawl): price — that turns up on dozens of products at once. The other is an account issue: Misrepresentation, and with it a suspension that takes every product off Shopping ads and free listings.
They look different, but they come from the same question Google asks about every store: can a shopper trust what they see? This guide explains what Google checks, why mismatches happen even when your page looks right, and a checklist to work through before you ask Google for a review.
What misrepresentation means
Google's misrepresentation policy asks that listings are "clear, honest, and provide information that users need to make informed decisions". It is not a rule about one attribute in your feed; it is about your store as a business. The policy groups violations roughly like this:
| Category | What Google looks for | Typical cause in a real shop |
|---|---|---|
| Unacceptable business practices | False identity or business information, impersonation, not delivering | No business name or address anywhere on the site |
| Dishonest pricing and transaction conditions | Fees, conditions or payment terms that only appear late | Shipping costs only shown in the last checkout step |
| Unavailable offers | Products you can't actually sell or ship | Feed says in stock; the page says sold out |
The consequences depend on the category. Google says the severe ones — such as false identity or dishonest pricing — lead to a suspension "upon detection and without prior warning", and accounts are reinstated "only in compelling circumstances". For the others, "a warning will be issued at least 7 days prior to any suspension". That week is the time to fix things.
Why price and availability mismatches matter as much
A mismatch means Google's crawler read another price or stock status on your landing page than the one in your feed. Google's help page on mismatched prices is blunt: "We continue to treat products with mismatches as critical errors that can lead to account suspension."
Many accounts have automatic item updates switched on, so Merchant Center quietly corrects the price from the page. That keeps the product running, but the mismatch is still recorded. A store whose prices disagree with its feed every week looks like a store that can't be trusted — which is exactly what misrepresentation is about.
The same applies to availability: "The value that you submit
for the availability attribute in your product data and the information listed on your landing page must be the
same." One more detail from that page: don't mark products out_of_stock to pause them — Google offers the pause
attribute for that.
The six usual causes of a mismatch
When a merchant says "but the price on my page is right", it usually is — now. Google compared at a different moment, read a different part of the page, or saw a different version of it. These causes cover most cases:
| Cause | What happens | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| VAT | The feed sends the net price, the page shows the price with tax (or the reverse). The gap is exactly one VAT rate. | In most countries Google wants the price with VAT. Fix it in the feed's price rule, not on the page. |
| Sale timing | The sale ended on the site at midnight; the feed still sends sale_price until the next update — or the other way round. |
Send sale_price_effective_date with the sale, in the right time zone, and update the feed soon after sales start and end. |
| Default variant | Every variant links to the same page, which shows the default size or colour at another price. | Link each variant to an address that preselects it, such as ?variant=…. |
| Stale structured data | The visible price is right, but the page's JSON-LD still has the old one, often from a cached template. | Make the structured data come from the same price as the page. Google reads both. |
| Currency | The page shows the visitor's local currency, or a currency switcher defaults to another one. | Landing pages must list prices "in the same currency as submitted in your product data". |
| Stock changed | The product sold out after the last feed update. | Update the feed more often, or send stock changes as they happen. |
A seventh cause is less common but serious: a page that no longer exists. A product link that answers 404 is a disapproval of its own.
The store checklist
Work through this before you request a review — and ideally before Google ever asks. Each line is something Google can see on your site or in your account.
Who you are
- Contact page, linked from every page — the footer is where people (and Google) look.
- A phone number on the home or contact page.
- An email address at your own domain —
[email protected]is more convincing than a free mailbox. - Your business name and address, on the contact page or in the footer, matching the business details in Merchant Center. Organization structured data helps.
- The whole store on HTTPS, with
http://redirecting tohttps://.
Your terms
- A return and refund policy, linked from the footer, that says how many days customers have, who pays for the return and how refunds are made. Set the same policy in Merchant Center.
- Shipping costs and delivery times on the site, matching the shipping settings in Merchant Center or the shipping you send in the feed.
- A privacy policy wherever you collect personal data.
- Payment options shown before payment, and a checkout that works.
Your claims and pages
- Remove claims you can't back up: "best price", fake countdowns, badges you weren't awarded, reviews you can't show.
- Product pages that agree with the feed: price, sale price, currency and availability.
- Product structured data (JSON-LD) with price and availability on product pages, so Google can verify offers — see Google's structured data guide.
- robots.txt that lets Googlebot read your home page and product pages. If Google can't read the page, it can't verify it.
Then ask for a review
Google's page on warnings and suspensions describes the review request. Google says account reviews "typically take 7 business days, but may take longer". Request a review once everything above is done — repeated requests without changes don't speed anything up.
Find mismatches before Google does
Google's crawler checks your pages on its own schedule. You can check them on yours: take a sample of product pages, open each one, and compare the price, sale price, currency and availability with what your feed sends for that product.
Two things make that comparison useful:
- Compare with the feed's own row, after your rules — not with the store's database. If a rule adds VAT or a sale price, the feed is what Google sees.
- Sample the products that matter: the most viewed ones, and the ones whose price or stock just changed. That's where a mismatch costs the most and where it is most likely.
A tolerance helps too. Rounding differences of a cent are not what Google disapproves products for; a difference of more than about 1% usually has a real cause from the table above.
How FeedManager helps
FeedManager has three tools for this, built around the feeds it already publishes:
- Page Checks (Standard and up) reads a daily sample of the product pages your Google Merchant Center, Microsoft and Meta feeds link to — 25 to 200 pages a day by plan, most viewed and recently changed products first — and compares each with the feed's own row after mapping and rules. A difference of more than 1%, another currency, "in stock" against "out of stock" or a missing page is reported with its likely cause. It reads only store domains you confirmed, within robots.txt, one page every three seconds.
- Store trust checks the store weekly for the signals in the checklist above — HTTPS, contact page, phone, domain email, address, return, shipping and privacy policies, robots.txt and Product structured data — and explains each one.
- Merchant Center statuses (Pro and up) shows Google's own verdict per product and the account issues it reports, with a plain-language checklist for misrepresentation, return policy, shipping and business details, and an alert when Google reports an account issue or approvals drop.
If the issues Google reports are about feed data rather than your store — missing GTINs, invalid categories, image problems — our guide to Merchant Center feed errors covers those.
Frequently asked questions
What does misrepresentation mean in Google Merchant Center?
It is Google's policy against listings and stores that aren't clear and honest about who is selling, what things cost and on what terms. It covers false business information, hidden fees and conditions, offers you can't fulfil and claims you can't back up. Google judges the whole store, so one suspension takes every product offline.
How long does a misrepresentation review take?
Google says account reviews typically take 7 business days, but may take longer. Fix everything first: requesting reviews again and again without changes delays reinstatement.
Why does Merchant Center say my price doesn't match when it looks right?
Google compares the feed with what its crawler saw on the page at a certain time, and reads both the visible price and the page's structured data. A sale that ended between two updates, a price without VAT, the default variant's price, a cached JSON-LD block or another currency all cause a mismatch even if the page looks right to you now.
Can a price mismatch suspend my account?
Yes. Google treats products with mismatched prices as critical errors that can lead to an account suspension, so repeated mismatches are more than a product problem.
Does automatic item updates fix price mismatches?
It hides some of them: Merchant Center can update a product's price and availability from your landing page. But Google still reports the mismatch it found, and still counts it. Fix the cause in the feed or the store.
Can FeedManager find these problems?
Yes. Page Checks compares a daily sample of your product pages with the rows your feeds send and names the likely cause, and checks your store weekly for the trust signals Google looks for. With Merchant Center connected, FeedManager also shows Google's own statuses and account issues with a plain-language checklist.
Publish this feed with FeedManager
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