Any other store
Google Merchant Center problems on any online store
If shoppers can open your store in a browser, the store check can read it.
How to start
Run the free store check on any store address. With a ShieldKit account, the first full store check (up to 11 checks) is free.
The free check on the website runs 7 of the 11 checks, with no account and nothing to install.
How fixes work
- Every problem comes with plain-English fix steps.
- With Recovery, we write your refund and shipping policies from your answers, and draft your privacy policy and terms. You paste each one into your site’s editor, with steps for where it goes.
- Nothing needs installing, on any platform: the store check reads your store the way a shopper’s browser does.
Prices and hidden problems
- Price Watch checks the prices on your product pages: the price Google reads against the price shoppers see, and strikethrough prices that aren’t a real discount.
- With Google Merchant Center connected, it also compares each product with Google’s own price.
- Free shows how many products are affected; Monitoring and Recovery list each one.
- With Recovery, the deep check looks for causes a quick look misses: template text left on a page, social links that go to the theme maker, trust claims with nothing to back them up, urgency pop-ups and broken menu links.
You can also connect your Google Merchant Center account, read-only, to see Google’s own issues next to the store check.
8 of the 11 checks on any online store
Your storefront, policies and contact details are read from the site itself, on any platform. Product data and product images need a product list, which many platforms don’t publish; where yours doesn’t, they come back Not checked. Business identity runs once you connect your Merchant Center account.
- RefundIn the free check
- ShippingIn the free check
- Privacy and termsIn the free check
- Contact detailsIn the free check
- Product dataNot checked here: it needs a product list.
- Hidden fees
- Google product listingsIn the free check
- Business identityNot checked here: it needs your Merchant Center account connected.
- Storefront accessIn the free check
- Payment displayIn the free check
- Product imagesNot checked here: it needs a product list.
Merchant Center
How a any online store gets its products to Google
Whatever your store runs on, Merchant Center needs product data from somewhere, and that part is your platform’s decision: a file at an address Google fetches on a schedule, or Google’s API. The rest — your policies, your contact details, your business name — Google reads from the site itself, and that half doesn’t depend on your platform at all.
- 1
Verify and claim your store’s address in Merchant Center, using the address shoppers actually use.
- 2
Send your products by whichever route your platform supports, and note how often it updates. A scheduled fetch means Google is always a little behind your store.
- 3
Check that each product’s address in the feed opens a page a shopper can buy from, in the country and currency the feed states.
Fixing it here
What usually goes wrong on any online store
The product address in your feed has to open
A product Google can’t reach is the most mechanical problem on this list and the easiest to miss, because the page usually works for you. Redirects, country rules and out-of-stock pages all read as a page that doesn’t work.
How to fix a product page Google cannot openWhat your page shows and what your feed says
Price, availability and currency are all read against the page Google opens. Any part of your site that changes them for the visitor — a converter, a members’ price, a cached page — changes one side only.
How to fix a feed that does not match your siteA page per policy, linked in your footer
Refund and returns, shipping, privacy, terms. Give each its own address, publish it, and link it in your footer so it can be reached from any page without signing in.
How to fix a missing refund policyFees a shopper only meets at checkout
A handling, restocking or delivery fee that first appears in the basket is read as a problem whatever your platform. Say it on the product page, or in the policy that covers it.
How to fix hidden fees at checkout