Products not showing in Google Shopping: find the blocked ones and fix them

What this means

Every product you send to Google Merchant Center gets a status. Your product feed is the list of products your shop sends to Google. Google uses 5 statuses:

• Approved: the product is showing on Google.
• Limited: it shows, but only in some countries, some ad types, or with some data hidden.
• Not approved: it can't show on Google at all.
• Under review: Google is still checking it.
• Processing: recent edits are being applied, which Google says may take up to 15 minutes.

PerfoAds counts how many of your products Merchant Center marks Not approved. Those products can't show in your Shopping or Performance Max campaigns, however good the campaign settings are. Performance Max is Google's all-in-one campaign type, and it shows your products too.

Google sorts the reasons into 2 groups. Policy disapprovals mean your website or the product breaks a Shopping policy. Data quality disapprovals mean the product data doesn't follow Google's product data specification, for example a wrong GTIN (the barcode number on the box). Problems on your site count too, such as placeholder content or broken links. Ads in Search campaigns have their own approval, covered in ad not approved.

Why it costs you money

A blocked product can't earn. If it's one of your best sellers, every day it sits in Not approved is a day of lost sales from ads you're already paying to run.

It also bends the rest of the account. Your budget flows to the products that can show, which may be weaker sellers or lower-margin items. Your return can drop and the reason isn't visible in the campaign report. Check what each campaign earns per $1 with the ROAS calculator.

Here's an example. Your feed has 450 products. PerfoAds can match 400 of them to Merchant Center, and 30 of those are Not approved. That's 30 / 400 = 7.5%, over the 5% line, so PerfoAds flags it. 4 of the 30 are best sellers that brought in $2,400 of ad sales in the 90 days before they were blocked. That's $2,400 / 90 = about $26.67 a day, or about $800 a month, while they stay blocked. With 20 of 400 blocked, it's exactly 5% and PerfoAds doesn't flag it. Any best sellers in those 20 are still worth fixing.

To do this for your shop, download the Not approved list and look up what each product sold through ads in the 90 days before it was blocked. For products that were never approved, use their sales on your site as a rough guide.

How to check your account in 2 minutes

1. In Merchant Center, go to Products under Products & store (Google's steps).
2. Open the Needs attention tab, then All products that need attention.
3. Turn off the Prioritized fixes toggle if you want to see every issue, including low-impact ones.
4. Use the filter icon to narrow the list, for example by status. Select the download icon to get a .csv of the affected products.
5. Check above the summary cards for View setup and policy issues. Problems listed there affect the whole account.

PerfoAds flags this when more than 5% of the products it can match to Merchant Center are Not approved. Products it can't match are left out of the count. Limited products count too when Google blocks them in at least 1 country or ad type. If PerfoAds can't read any Merchant Center status, it skips the check. The check only runs for online stores.

When it is not a problem

• The blocked products are ones you don't sell any more. Discontinued items often sit in Not approved. PerfoAds still counts them, so remove them from the feed and the noise goes away.
• PerfoAds' own readings disagree. PerfoAds reads your feed 3 ways: Merchant Center's upload report for your feed, each product's Merchant Center status, and each product's status in Google Ads. If the upload report says 0% of items are valid while either of the other 2 shows approved or eligible products, PerfoAds gives no number at all. Its total can also be lower than the count on your Merchant Center Products page, because it leaves out products it can't match.
• The whole account has an issue. If Merchant Center shows an account-level warning or suspension, that's the real problem. Fixing single products won't help until the account is cleared.
• Limited is fine for your market. A Limited product that's only blocked in a country you don't target doesn't cost you ad sales. PerfoAds still counts it as Not approved, so check where it's blocked before you spend time on it.

How to fix it

1. Start with account issues. Click View setup and policy issues on the Needs attention tab. Fix anything there first, then request a review. Google says reviews can take up to 7 days.
2. Group product issues by cause. Download the .csv and sort by issue. Often a handful of causes explain many of the blocked items, such as missing GTINs, image problems, or price and availability mismatches.
3. Open the issue details. Each issue has an Issue Details Page with the business impact, examples of affected products and the steps to fix it. Read it before you edit anything.
4. Fix the data at the source. Google recommends editing your product data and uploading it again. If you use Shopify or another platform app, change the product there. The next sync (the automatic copy from your shop to Merchant Center) then carries the fix.
5. Turn on automatic updates. On the Automations tab under Products, turn on automatic updates. Google says this helps reduce the risk of preemptive product disapproval. That's when Google blocks a product as a precaution because its price or availability in the feed doesn't match your product page.
6. Request a review where needed. On the Needs attention tab, click Fix next to a product to open its details. Under What needs attention, choose Request website check after a fix, or I disagree with the issue if you think Google got it wrong, then submit with Request website check or Request review (Google's review steps).

Expect a wait. Google says reviews may take up to 3-5 business days for Shopping ads.

Fix your best sellers first. That's where blocked products cost you the most.

Approved but still no impressions

If Merchant Center says Approved and the products still get no impressions (times your ad was shown), look in Google Ads.

1. Go to Products in the Campaigns menu and open the Diagnostics tab. Each product shows as Eligible, Eligible (limited) or Not eligible.
2. For Not eligible products, read the Product issues column. Google lists reasons like the product or listing group has been excluded, or no campaign includes the product. A listing group is the product filter inside a Performance Max campaign. A product group does the same job in a Standard Shopping campaign.
3. Check your bids. Google says that with a very low bid your ads may not have any impressions. Target ROAS is the return per $1 you ask Google to aim for. For a new campaign, Google suggests a low ROAS target.

Check it with a query (optional)

This lists products Google Ads says can't show in ads, with their issues. It reads every Merchant Center account linked to your Google Ads account. Run it in a Google Ads script or through the Google Ads API.

SELECT shopping_product.item_id, shopping_product.title,
       shopping_product.status, shopping_product.issues
FROM shopping_product
WHERE shopping_product.status = 'NOT_ELIGIBLE'

Google notes this status can take up to 24 hours to update. Products marked ELIGIBLE_LIMITED can show, but not everywhere.