- Hey guys, Sam here from KeyCommerce.com
Do you have a Google Merchant Center account suspension
due to misrepresentation
of self or product?
There can be many reasons for this suspension
but one common reason is because you have a
bad app or plugin or piece of code on your website.
Seriously this is actually quite common.
Make sure that you go through any app, code or plugin
that you've installed on your website.
If you've got plugins installed I recommend Googling
the plugin, finding the reviews page, finding forums
and seeing if anyone else has had issues with the same
plugin or app.
Some common examples that I'm seeing recently are from
apps and plugins that are just the pricing of the products
on your store, or add discounts to your store.
If these apps play up they're not working properly
then they're going to cause errors because they're
going to show a different price on the website
then what's on your feed.
Google is going to notice this and they're also going
to notice if people can't use the discounts on your website
the discount code in the checkout
and they're going to ban you for this.
Because really they think that you're misleading customers.
Misrepresentation of self or products.
Another example of this is if you have an app that changes
the pricing or even the currency of customers in
different locations.
If your feed only has one pricing here and Google sees
the discrepancy with your website, they're going to
freak out, think you're misleading customers and boom
you get the big ban, the suspension of your Google
Merchant Center account.
So really when someone sees the pricing on Google shopping
in the ads and they go to the website
it's going to say something different and yeah that sucks
Google is going to ban you.
Another cause of this suspension is when you have discount
apps like I said.
Someone goes to the website, they see discount code
enter this in checkout, they go to the checkout
they enter the discount code, it doesn't work.
Google says you're misleading customers, you know you're
saying you have a discount code, a sale but people
can't actually purchase at that price so they're going
to ban you, suspend your account for misrepresentation
of self or product.
And to Google this looks super scammy.
It's like your enticing people in, you're pulling people in
with this pricing but they can't even purchase the product
at the price.
So be very careful about this, test your website.
And really, it's about creating that good buying experience
for the customers, it's super super important guys.
Let me jump into my computer and I'm going to show you
exactly what I mean.
Hey guys, okay so we're now in my computer and
I'm going to show you the app page for this app
that I've seen have issues.
And maybe the app developers have
already fixed this already.
So this issue did happen a couple of weeks ago
hopefully they fixed it already.
But this is just to show you an example of the process
you need to undertake for all the apps in your store.
I recommend Googling the app name and seeing if there
are any people with problems with that same app.
But a good place to look is actually on the actual
reviews page, so I'm in the Shopify app store
this is the app that someone I know had clear issues with
and it caused a suspension.
And you can see the reviews, like there are
a lot of bad reviews here, 39 one star reviews.
The average rating is 3.7, I would not install this
on my store, I don't care how good this app might claim
to be, if it's got 3.7, man like you're just looking
for trouble right there.
So let me go through the reviews anyway, this is just
my opinion okay so you have to make your decision.
Maybe these guys have fixed the app since then so
that could be the case but let me check out
the actual reviews.
So some people got charged the monthly fee even though
they unloaded it, maybe that's a subscription issue.
But if I go down here it says, it simply does not work
when you add your products to your cart, everything
seems to work well and once you check out the customer
finds itself with a non discounted price lol
what a great surprise for them.
So basically it's a discounting app that's meant to
put this discount in the checkout but it doesn't
actually work.
So you can see this is clearly you know against
Google's policy.
Although the big policy here is that discounts
that aren't available.
So even though they're told that this discount is available
when they see the website, the customer, they're going to
go try to put in this discount code and it's not going
to work.
So Google says okay you're misleading your customers
so lets suspend you for that.
So the bulk discount feature works on every page
except the checkout page.
It generates a code that works then before checkout
the code does not work.
So a lot of people having this issue and it's a pricing
app so it's very important that it works well if you're
going to be running Google Shopping campaigns.
Because it's so important that you make sure that the
pricing on your side matches the pricing in the fee.
That's one thing but also overall that discounts work.
When they're advertised if you're running a Merchant Center
promotion that that code can actually be
used on the website.
Google is going to check this sort of stuff whether
automatically or manually and I've seen that happen.
Okay, so I really like Booster Apps but unfortunately
this one completely broke my store.
Most notably it broke my quantity selector
so it could never be more than one.
Okay that's terrible so yeah someone has replied here to
say that while I can see everything has been
resolved with your store we have sent a couple of emails
to discuss.
So it sounds like they are responsive but man
go through, I'm just showing you the exercise that
if I saw these comments and I saw that all these people
had messed up their whole store that's causing all
these pricing issues which is so important that
you don't have these issues.
I would go, okay uninstall that app, that could be the
reason for your suspension so if you're watching this
and you're trying to figure out how to get un-suspended.
Go through all those apps, look at the reviews.
There's also forums that exist where people will say
yeah I got suspended because of this and here's the issue
here and they'll say this app is what caused it.
In this case it's someone I'm working with closely and he
found out that that was the actual cause of the issue.
So here I am, I'm going to teach everyone else because
I'm sure that a lot of people haven't even thought about
their apps causing this suspension.
But you can see, can you imagine I spent months working
on my store and I was ready to launch. Their app wasn't
working and I tried to fix the bug by following what their
instructional video advised. Guess what happened, my whole
store disappeared, all of it, there's no one available
to help, I don't even want to give one star.
I feel really bad for this guy with his store, I hope
he got it back online that was back in February.
Looks like they responded so hopefully he was able to go
through and get that fixed, but maybe these guys make a lot
of apps, maybe they just don't have enough support or
enough developers to take care of all their apps.
I don't know maybe they've got it fixed, that's why I'm
saying that because you know I don't want to get into
trouble but, this is just one example.
There are a lot of other apps that also just aren't up
to the quality.
If you're running a WooCommerce site it could just be the
code on your site maybe you've put some code in there
maybe you've got a custom app installed,
custom plugin sorry.
That could be the issue too, so Google is going to crawl
this stuff and find that issue.
When I say code as well I've seen in a number of different
cases, this is before this huge new wave of suspensions
the last couple of months, Google has gotten really liberal
with their banning.
But even before that I've been working with Google Shopping
and Merchant Center suspensions and Merchant Center accounts
for years now and I remember back a common reason for
suspensions was, if you were linking to some sort of
JS scripts or some library or some bit of code within the
HTML of your site and you linked to insecure it didn't
have like an SSL certificate and also they've blacklisted
this app or this plugin or this library.
That could get your ads disabled, disapproved or your
Merchant Center account banned as well suspended.
It wasn't as common as it is these days but that was
a cause that did happen.
Anyway guys, go through your site, I can't give you
every single you know, what bit of code exactly it is.
You're going to have to go through yourself do some
troubleshooting and check it out for your own site.
But I do hope that led you on the right path.
Go through you might be surprised, go through your apps.
Go through your plugins and check are they all good
are they clear, do they have anyone else having issues
that's affecting the site as well, because that could be
the cause of your suspension.
Alright guys, that's it for today's video
I hope that was helpful for you to try and fix that
suspension issue of misrepresentation of self or product.
Now I've made a few videos on the suspensions
I know it's a really big problem that a lot of people
are having especially with new stores.
I recommend checking out my other videos on
the topic I'll leave a few links in the description
to some other videos for getting through this suspension
and getting those shopping campaigns live again.
Right now I'm also working on a bit of a guide
a step by step mini course that shows you how to fix
the suspension for your eCommerce store.
I'm still working on it so it's not live right now but
check the description and check the comments
I'll put a link there for it, you can go check it out
once it's ready, give me a week or so
and I should have that done.
Anyway guys if this video was helpful please give it a
thumbs up, let me know in the comments
and let me know how you're going with the suspension.
Have you found an app or a plugin or bit of code on
your website that's causing your suspension.
Thanks so much for watching guys and I'll see you
in the next video, bye for now.
(funky jazz music)