Google has a reputation for kicking merchants off of Google Shopping without much context or explanation. Two major reasons ecommerce merchants products don’t show up on Google are data feed errors and listing banned products in your data feed.
Data Feed Errors: Your data feed doesn’t match Google’s specifications or has formatting issues.
Banned Data Feed Products: Your data feed has products which are disallowed on Google.
Google Shopping Data Feed Errors
If your Google Shopping data feed is getting rejected first make sure it matches Google’s data feed specifications. Here are some additional resources to help you identify and fix data feed
- Troubleshoot your Google Shopping data feed
- Example of a Google Shopping data feed
- Common Google Shopping data feed errors and solutions
- Google Data Feed Debugger
- Google Shopping Data Feed Taxonomy
- Got kicked off Google Shopping?
Banned Google Shopping Data Feed Products
Google’s excludes certain products on Google Shopping which don’t meet family safe requirements such as fireworks and drugs. Think of Google as a movie theater which has to allow everyone in, they can’t play any R rated movies if they need to let kids under 13 in.
Although Google lists its restricted products, its a very common occurrence for online merchants to have their data feed taken down due to banned products which aren’t listed on Google’s restricted products page.
Let me say that again. In additional to Google’s list of products which are restricted in your data feed, there are other brands and products which can cause an entire data feed to get rejected.
Google Unlisted Banned Products
Here are just a few of the brands and products types we’ve encountered which can cause Google to take down your entire data feed, and which aren’t on the Google Shopping restricted products list:
- Bhelliom Enterprises (Brand)
- Astragalus Extract
- He Shou Wu (ie http://www.evitamins.com/nuhair-regrowth-for-women-natrol-16025)
- Weapons (Guns, Gun parts/hardware, Ammunition, Knives, Bombs, Throwing Stars, Brass Knuckles).
- Apricot Kernels
- Muscle Marinade (Purus Labs)
Fix Banned Products On Google Shopping
If you can’t find your products on Google Shopping, take the time to troubleshoot your data feed for format and content using the links above. AdWords support consistently ranks the lowest among the comparison shopping engines, so be sure to follow best practices when contacting them to troubleshoot your data feed.
