Merchant Center Misrepresentation: How to Fix It

“Misrepresentation” is the most common reason Merchant Center accounts get suspended, and the most frustrating, because the notice rarely says exactly what’s wrong. In short, Google needs to be confident that shoppers won’t be misled by your store. Fix that across the whole site before requesting a review — failed reviews make you wait longer each time.

What the policy covers

Google’s Misrepresentation policy doesn’t allow offers that represent you or your products in a way that isn’t accurate, realistic and truthful, or that push customers into a purchase without all the relevant information. Its examples include:

a false identity, business name or contact information;
not disclosing the total price, including taxes, fees and surcharges;
not clearly disclosing fees — such as unexpected restocking fees — before checkout;
denying returns or refunds despite a clear return policy;
hiding where your products actually ship from;
listing items as available when you can’t fulfill the orders.

For egregious violations, Google says accounts are suspended on detection, without warning. For some other issues there’s a warning at least 7 days before suspension.

Audit your store before anything else

Go through your site as a cautious first-time customer would:

Contact information. Make it easy to reach you — a contact form, email or phone number — and make sure the details match your Merchant Center account.
Return and refund policy. Easy to find and complete: the return window, how to return, any fees. If you don’t accept returns, say so explicitly.
Checkout. It must work end to end, and be secured with a valid SSL certificate. Every fee should be visible before payment.
Prices and availability. What’s in your product data must match your landing pages.
Business details. Your business name and details should be consistent across your site, Merchant Center and payment profiles.
Claims. Remove anything you can’t back up — “#1 rated”, fake countdown timers, discounts from a price you never charged.

Also remove any non-compliant offers from your product data, and update pages your products link to so they meet the policies.

A contact page you can adapt — use the same business name and details as in Merchant Center:

[Business legal name], trading as [store name]
[Street address, city, state, ZIP, country]
Email: [your support email]
Phone: [+1 555 000 0000] ([Mon–Fri, 9am–5pm ET])

We reply to every message within [1] business day. For orders, please include your order number.

Then request a review

In Merchant Center, find the issue under Products → Needs attention (or the account banner), and use Request review. Google may ask you to complete identity verification first — use high-quality documents that match your account details.

Reviews typically take 3–7 business days, sometimes longer for complex cases.
After an unsuccessful review, a cool-down period may apply, during which you can’t request another review — and Google says it may grow with each unsuccessful review.

Don’t request a review the moment you change one thing, and don’t delete the account and start a new one. Google says deleting a suspended account doesn’t resolve the suspension. Fix everything first, then ask once.

Product-level problems too?

If individual products are disapproved — price mismatches, missing GTINs, image overlays — our free Merchant Center disapproval checker walks through the common causes in order.

For how warnings, review requests and cool-down periods work for any suspension, see Google Merchant Center account suspended.

If the issue is specifically a missing return policy, see Merchant Center missing return policy.

Google Merchant Center suspended for misrepresentation? What to fix before you request a review

What the policy covers

Audit your store before anything else

Then request a review

Product-level problems too?

Official references