Disapprovals
Find out why your products are disapproved and what clears them
One cause often hides behind hundreds of separate disapprovals.
A disapproval list is long, repetitive and sorted by nothing useful. Webshop Vitals groups disapprovals by the thing that actually caused them, tells you how many products each cause is holding back, and points at the field to change. Fixing the top group is usually the difference between a handful of live products and a full catalogue.
Free scan, no credit card, results in minutes.
- High1 store
We could not find a return or refund policy page
No return or refund policy page was reachable from the homepage or at the conventional URLs we checked.
TRUST_RETURNS_MISSING - High11 products
Products are missing a product identifier
Branded items without a GTIN or MPN are limited by Google rather than disapproved, so the loss is invisible.
PD_IDENTIFIER_MISSING - Medium24 products
Shipping information is not machine readable
Delivery details appear in page text only, so they cannot be surfaced in results.
SD_SHIPPING_INFO_MISSING
Example findings, shown with the rule codes the product reports.and 2 more in the full report
The problem
The list is long because the causes repeat
Google reports disapprovals per product, not per cause. A single missing attribute across a category produces one line per item, so a catalogue of eight hundred items can show eight hundred problems that are really three problems. Working the list top to bottom is the slowest possible order.
- Hundreds of disapprovals that all say the same thing
- A fix that clears a few items and leaves the rest untouched
- Products that get disapproved again a week after being fixed
- No idea which disapproval is costing the most revenue
What we check
Inside the disapproved products
Every check below runs on your real store and reports findings you can act on, with the affected products named.
Cause grouping
Every disapproval mapped to the underlying reason, with a count of the products behind it.
Impact ordering
Groups ranked by how many products they block, so the biggest win is at the top.
Field level detail
The exact attribute that triggered the rejection, and the value currently being sent.
Repeat offenders
Issues that were fixed and came back, which usually means a feed rule rather than a product.
Policy versus data
A clear split between policy problems, which need a decision, and data problems, which need an edit.
Use this as your own checklist
0 of 5How it works
Three steps from question to answer
No plugin to install, no code to add, and nothing to change on your store.
- 1
Pull the disapproval set
Every disapproved item and its reason, straight from your account.
- 2
Cluster by cause
Identical reasons collapse into one finding with an affected count and a sample list.
- 3
Rank and explain
Each group gets a plain description, the field involved and what a correct value looks like.
The report
What this check looks like in your dashboard
Findings land next to the score they moved and the products they affect, so a result always has somewhere to go next.
Website Readiness
89out of 100
- Product structured data30% 76
- Crawlability20% 97
- Product content20% 98
- Trust and merchant info15% 87
- AI commerce readiness15% 96
Products
Sorted by data quality| Product | Quality | Status |
|---|---|---|
3D & Collagen Snow Solution SKU ISOV-3DC-01 | 100 | Approved |
pH Balance Cleansing Cream SKU CORTHE-PH-08 | 80 | Limited |
Anti-Wrinkle Eye Mask SKU not set | 55 | Disapproved |
Holy Grow Lash Serum SKU BLOSSCO-LS-02 | 100 | Approved |
Since your last scan
- 7
- Issues fixed
- 2
- New issues
- 1
- Returned
- +4
- Readiness
Structured data returned on 24 products after a theme update. Caught the same day.
What you get
What changes after the first scan
Concrete outputs, not a grade with no next step.
- The one fix that clears the most products, identified in the first minute
- A count of exactly how many items each cause is holding back
- A distinction between a data gap and a policy issue, so the work goes to the right person
- Confirmation on the next scan that a fix actually landed
Questions
Disapproved Products questions, answered
The things merchants ask before they run their first scan.
Google uses identifiers to match your product to the same product sold elsewhere. When a branded, mass produced item arrives without a GTIN, Google cannot make that match and restricts or rejects the listing. Products you manufacture yourself are treated differently and can be marked as having no identifier.
Keep reading
Related checks
Google Merchant Center Audit
Read every account and product issue Google reports, grouped by root cause.
Price and Availability Mismatch Checker
Compare price and stock across your feed, your markup and the visible page.
GTIN, MPN and Brand Checker
Find missing, invalid and inconsistent product identifiers across the catalogue.
See where your store actually stands
Run a free scan and get a prioritised report of what to fix first, with the affected products named.
No credit card needed for the free scan.