background

 In April 2013 we started to look after SEO for our client Crystal Vision Locks (CVL) who are a leading specialist provider of locks and double glazing spares and have been trading online successfully via their e-commerce site since 2007. This post is about how we helped them to get a Google Merchant Center product suspension lifted.  

Products suspended from Google Shopping and Product Search

In late 2012 CVL's products were suspended in Google Merchant Centre. Clearly one of the aims of the SEO was to get the suspension lifted to improve the online visibility of their products. Google’s Product Search was still free at that time although Google had announced that this was set to change soon. It should be noted that CVL were still appearing in standard organic SERP listings when using search phrases such as their product names.

Product Names too long

We checked and, as far as we could ascertain, the data provided in our product feed complied with the guidelines published in the following Google Merchant Center Blog posts:

Products Feed Specification 

Summary of attribute requirements

However the Google Merchant Center Dashboard flagged the fact that listings had been suspended from Google Shopping, Google Search API for Shopping and Google Product Search.  The Data quality tab showed that 72 of the Product Names submitted to Google Merchant via the /googlemerchant.xml feed were too long i.e. over 70 characters in length.

Unfortunately Google doesn’t tell you all the products which have long names (that would make it far too easy). Instead it simply lists 10 examples, so I exported the full product data from our BarkWeb CMS into Excel and used the formula =LEN(A1) to display the number of characters in the product names (in the formula the cell value would change from A1 to A2 to A3 etc. for each new row of data). Having isolated the long Product Names we then optimised them so they were all 70 characters or less and reloaded the feed into Merchant Center.  

A few weeks later and the products were still suspended. Google Merchant Center still showed a notice telling us to check the Data quality section for errors but no errors were listed.  

No more free product search listings

Around the same time I was trying to get CVL re-instated Google decided to further complicate matters by introducing a new commercial model for Google Shopping based on Product Listing Ads (PLAs). Ostensibly Google said this change was to “improve the shopping experience” and to “help shoppers” but basically what this meant was that Product Search was no longer free. The commercial model was initially released in the US on October 17th 2012 and was then given a staged roll-out in other countries, eventually reaching the UK (and  Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic) on June 11th 2013. 

On the 10/09/13 I therefore set-up the PLA’s through CVL’s AdWords account and waited. The PLA’s appeared to be set up correctly but still no listings appeared in Google Shopping or Product Search Listings.

Contacting Google for support

By introducing the new commercial model, Google have made a massive change to Google Shopping that affects millions of online traders and e-commerce sites across the world (whilst making considerable gains in the process). It is therefore surprising that there doesn’t seem to be any direct product support or help desk set up in Google Merchant. They do offer some limited advice on Data quality enforcement and suspensions here: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/1678274?hl=en-GB. N.B. This post mentions that if your data is not compliant Google will send you an email with a warning. After one week if you don’t fix the problem your account will be suspended. You will then be subject to the appropriate penalty period based on the offence and products won’t go live again until the penalty period expires.

So having failed to find any direct support via Google Merchant Center I turned my attention to AdWords for help. In this case I opted for the Chat option (see below Contact US options) and was immediately offered assistance by a member of the Google AdWords support team via a live chat feed. 

Screenshot of Google Adwords help search bar

I was advised that:

  • The PLAs had been set up correctly but weren’t active because of the suspension
  • The AdWords support person couldn’t see the reason for the suspension
  • The matter would need to be escalated to Google Merchant Centre Support

 I gave my mobile number and was told that Merchant Center Support would be in touch.

Suspension lifted and PLAs active

I never received a call but a few days later on the 17/09/13 an email arrived from AdWords Support with the subject: Chat Follow-up. The email read (note the reassuringly human typo after the word suspension):

...Apologies for the delay in processing your query. 

Your merchant center account suspension as been lifted and you will be able to run Product Listing ads again…

Now the visibility of CVL products in the SERPs has vastly improved. In the below example they appear 5th in the organic SERP rankings in the left column and no less than 6 times in the paid Product Listing Ads on the right. 

Screenshot of Google Adwords help search bar

Conclusion

Like any company Google needs to make money - in their case via paid services like AdWords, PLAs, AdSense etc. If you have a support query that might be affecting their revenue stream and you're struggling to get help try contacting AdWords by phone, email or chat - even if the issue lies with a related Google service. Certainly the response we got was pretty quick and effective in terms of getting our suspension lifted in Google Merchant Centre.