Requesting a review after a Merchant Center suspension

Where the Request review button is

An account suspension is appealed from the issue itself, not from a separate form or a support ticket. In Merchant Center the path is:

1. Open the issueGo to Products → Needs attention and select View setup and policy issues. The same issue is also reachable from the Fix button on the banner at the top of the account, or from Review and fix on the Home page.
2. Say what happenedChoose I fixed the issue if you changed the store, or I disagree with the issue if you believe Google got it wrong and nothing needed fixing.
3. Send the requestClick Request review. If Merchant Center asks for more information about the website, the products or the business, answer it there.
4. Verify your identity if askedSome accounts are asked to complete identity verification first, with a government-issued ID or business registration documents. The review cannot start until that is done.

On Shopify with the Google & YouTube app, the equivalent is under the app's Settings, where the option is called Request re-review. It leads to the same review by Google.

If the button is missing or greyed out, there are three usual reasons: identity verification is still pending, the account has no products at all (add one product by hand under All products), or you are inside a cool-down. The end date of a cool-down is shown in the Needs attention tab.

What to prepare before you click

A review is not a conversation. Google looks at your site, your Merchant Center settings and your product data as they are at that moment and says yes or no. Everything you want the reviewer to see has to be live already. Before you request a review, go through this list:

• Identity. Business name, physical address and phone number visible on the site. More in Business identity.
• Contact. A contact page with phone, email, address and a way to write to you, linked from the footer. More in Insufficient contact information.
• Returns. A returns policy with a time window, the condition items must be in, who pays for return shipping and when the refund arrives. More in Missing return policy.
• Shipping. Where you ship, what it costs and how long it takes, matching the shipping settings in Merchant Center. More in Missing shipping policy.
• One set of business details. The same name, address and contact details on the site, under Business information in Merchant Center, and in your payment profile.
• Product data that matches the pages. Every price and availability in the feed must be what the landing page shows. More in Mismatched price.
• Every other issue in Needs attention. Clear the product disapprovals too, or remove the products you cannot fix.

The notice names a policy, not a page, so audit the whole store. For misrepresentation, the full list is in Merchant Center suspended for misrepresentation.

Review time, attempts and the cool-down

Google gives up to about 7 business days for an account review, and says complex cases can take longer. You receive an email when the request is sent and another when the review is finished. If the review passes, the issue disappears from Merchant Center; if not, it shows Review not approved. After approval, products become eligible to show again within about 24 hours.

The number of attempts is limited. You may have only one chance to disagree with an issue. If the problem is still there after your second fix-and-review attempt, a cool-down of about one week can start, and it can become longer after each failed review that follows. During a cool-down the Request review button is disabled, and Google says its support team cannot shorten or lift it.

That is why a quick "I fixed it" the same evening is the most expensive mistake here. Use the waiting time to fix everything, not to guess which one thing the reviewer wanted.

If you received a warning rather than a suspension, you have a deadline of 7 or 28 days. During that window you can ask for one courtesy review at any time. If it passes, the warning is lifted; if not, the account is checked again when the warning period ends.

What to write, bulk appeals, and what not to do

Most of the decision rests on the store itself, not on your text. When you do get a field to explain, keep it short and factual: what you changed, and where the reviewer can see it. Give the page URLs. Do not argue, do not blame the platform or a previous owner, and do not claim a fix you have not made — if the reviewer cannot see it on the site, the attempt is wasted.

• Good: "Added a returns policy (30 days, buyer pays return shipping) at /pages/returns, linked from the footer and every product page."
• Good: "Business name, address and phone are now identical on the site, in Business information and in the payments profile."
• Weak: "We have fixed all issues, please approve our account as soon as possible."

Bulk appeal vs standard review. A bulk appeal lets you disagree with one product-level policy issue for many products at once. It is not a way to lift an account suspension, it is not offered everywhere (including some third-party platforms), and if Google finds violating items in a large bulk appeal, it can fail at once and limit later appeals for those products. For a suspended account, the route is the standard Request review on the account issue.

Do not open a new account. Creating new accounts or websites to keep selling after a suspension is listed in Google's circumventing systems policy. Accounts found doing it are suspended without warning and are not allowed to list with Google again, and Google reinstates them only in compelling cases. A suspended account can be fixed; one caught circumventing usually cannot.

What Polyntor checks for this

• Business name, address, phone and email on the site, and whether they match what you declared
• Contact page: phone, domain email, address, hours, reply time, contact form
• Returns policy: window, condition, who pays return shipping, refund method and timing
• Shipping policy: zones, costs, processing and delivery times
• Links to all policy pages from the footer and product pages
• Prices on product pages against their structured data, and against your feed (price and availability)
• HTTPS, a valid certificate, placeholder text, broken key pages and dead links
• Whether the store runs on its own domain and uses a branded email address

Questions

Related errors

Google’s own pages on this

• Request a review of your issues — Google Merchant Center Help
• Fixing Merchant Center warnings and account suspensions — Google Merchant Center Help
• Misrepresentation — Google Merchant Center Help
• Abuse of the network — Google Merchant Center Help