How Do I Troubleshoot Disapprovals in Google Merchant Centre?

SEO

11 Sep 2025

Your product feed is live – but nothing’s showing. What’s gone wrong? And what can you do about it?

Google Merchant Centre (GMC) is a powerful ecommerce tool, but it’s also a stickler for the rules. If your products are disapproved, they won’t appear in Shopping results, Performance Max campaigns, or across the Display Network. And if enough disapprovals stack up, your entire account could even be suspended.

Happily, most disapprovals are fixable, once you know what you’re looking for. Here’s a guide to the most common pitfalls, how to self-diagnose them, and when to bring in expert help…

Start in the Diagnostics tab

Start by looking at GMC’s Diagnostics tab, which is basically your disapproval dashboard.

It breaks issues down into three categories:

Item issues – affecting specific products
Feed issues – problems with the file you uploaded
Account issues – bigger-picture problems that may affect everything.

Start with the most critical errors (those in red). Google will even tell you what to fix, although the explanations and instructions can sometimes be vague.

Common product disapproval reasons (and how to fix them)

Price mismatch

Your product feed says one thing, your website says another.

Fix: Ensure your landing page and feed use the same currency, format and price, especially if you’re using sale pricing or multi-currency tools.

Image issues

Google dislikes:

Watermarks or text overlays
Placeholder images
Low-res or incorrect aspect ratios.

Fix: Upload clean, high-quality images. No logos, no ‘SALE!’ banners.

Missing or incorrect GTIN/MPN

Google wants unique product identifiers, especially for branded goods, so getting these wrong will cause problems.

Fix: Provide the correct GTIN or MPN (check with your supplier or packaging if needed). Don’t make them up – invalid codes can cause more trouble.

Policy violations

This would include things like promoting unapproved pharmaceuticals, weapons, or adult content.

Fix: Remove the offending products, and make sure your site complies with Google Shopping policies.

Feed-level fixes to watch out for

If the whole feed is broken, Google may reject all items in one go. Here are two possible causes.

Missing required fields

Every product needs essentials like title, price, availability, condition and link.

Fix: Check your feed export setup. Platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, or BigCommerce sometimes need plugin tweaks or custom feed rules.

Encoding issues or formatting errors

Bad characters, unescaped ampersands (&), or wrong delimiters can throw Google out.

Fix: Validate your feed using Google’s Feed Rules or external validators.

Watch for site-level problems

Even if your feed is perfect, your website itself might be the cause of disapprovals. All of these can cause problems:

Unsecure checkout (HTTP vs HTTPS)
Broken product pages (404s)
Missing returns or refund policy pages
No contact information.

Google needs to trust your store, so make sure your ecommerce site is as polished and complete as your product listings.

Use Feed Rules to patch data on the fly

Sometimes you don’t need to rebuild your whole feed – you can just tweak what’s already there. Use Feed Rules in GMC to:

Clean up titles (eg remove ‘On Sale Now!’)
Auto-fill missing values
Combine fields (eg brand + product name).

It’s a handy way to quickly fix common issues without editing the raw feed file.

Get support or bring in the experts

Still stuck? Google support can help with some issues, but wait times and canned responses are common.

At Chillibyte, on the other hand, we can offer timely and responsive support, for example by:

Auditing your entire GMC setup
Resolving chronic disapproval causes
Setting up monitoring systems to prevent future issues
Managing merchant feeds alongside Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

Final thought: Disapprovals are a symptom, not a punishment

A disapproved product isn’t the end of the world. It’s simply a warning sign that something in your data, site, or setup needs attention.

With the right approach (and a bit of patience) most disapprovals can be reversed, quickly and safely.

Need help with GMC?

Chillibyte’s ecommerce team has helped dozens of brands turn red flags to green lights. If you need to troubleshoot some GMC issues, why not get in touch today.