Merchant Center Business practices
Unacceptable business practices
The site has to be a business a stranger can identify.
Unacceptable business practices is a Google Ads policy against scamming people and misstating the business, including phishing. Google treats it as egregious. The honest response is a site that names the merchant, sells what it shows, and does not collect secrets by pretending to be someone else. The appeal, if you make one, is in Google Ads. We do not run that appeal.
Overlap with Merchant Center
Shopping calls a related failure misrepresentation: inaccurate offers, hidden terms, a business that does not add up. If your Ads email says unacceptable business practices and your Merchant Center email says misrepresentation, fix the store once, carefully, and use each product’s own appeal path. Do not copy one appeal text into the other and hope.
- One legal name, address, phone and email.
- Products that exist, at the price on the page.
- No fake reviews, fake countdowns, or borrowed brands.
- A checkout that does not ask for anything unrelated to the order.
Questions people ask
Is this the same as misrepresentation?
They are different policies in different products. The store problems underneath can be the same.
Will a new website on a new domain help?
A new domain that hides the old business is closer to evasion than to a fix. See [circumventing systems](/google-ads-suspension/circumventing-systems/).
What can you do?
Review the Shopify store and list every Merchant Center point that needs work, from $499. Ads reinstatement stays with Google.
Google’s own pages