Suspended by Google Merchant Centre

-- HikaShop version -- : 5.1.0
-- Joomla version -- : 3.10.12
-- PHP version -- : 7.4.33
-- Browser(s) name and version -- : Opera One(version: 112.0.5197.30)
-- Error-message(debug-mod must be tuned on) -- : Suspended by google merchant

Hi,
we got the message (below) regarding a suspension of our products by the Google Merchant Centre but can't figure out exactly what the problem is. It seems to be for a few broken landing pages but all of our products have been suspended. An example has been included privately for you to review and we can provide backend access if required.
We had trouble removing some of the 404 error pages for products that were not longer available (i.e. 0 items in stock). So we customised the 404 error page to indicate that the products were out of stock with a link to contact us to discuss options. Maybe if you can provide a way to delete these pages it would solve the problem but we're not sure (and google isn't clear either).

Thanks. The message from google follows. - Ian and Stu

---

Dear Google Merchant Center User,

Merchant Center Account: xxxx xxxxx Pharmacy (1234567999)
We've reviewed your Merchant Center account and found policy violations.

Your Merchant Center account has been suspended, and your products are no longer being promoted.

Note that a suspension notification is also displayed in your Merchant Center account. In addition, related Merchant Center accounts may also get suspended.

Your Merchant Center account is in violation of the following policies:
Broken landing page

DESTINATION URL DOWN (EDITORIAL AND PROFESSIONAL STANDARDS)

---

Hi,

Well, this indicates that the URL of some of the products in the XML file you provided to Google Merchant became invalid.
This XML file can be generated with the Google Products plugin:
www.hikashop.com/support/documentation/8...google-products.html
Either you generate the XML file once and upload it to Google Merchant manually, or you setup an automatic XML file upload so that the plugin keeps regenerating the file and sending it to Google Merchant periodically.

Supposing you did it manually, it possible that you changed products and menu items since then, rendering the URLs of the products on Google Merchant's end invalid. In that case, regenerating the file with the plugin and uploading it again to Google Merchant should fix the problem. And then, you can set it up to refresh the file periodically.

Supposing you had setup the periodic update, either the cron isn't triggered anymore for some reason, or you had configured canonical URLs in your products and these URLs became invalid because you changed the menu items in Joomla without updating the canonical URLs relying on them in the products.

Hi,
can you please take a look at our plugin config. I recall that you kindly help set up the cron job for this but something might have changed that we're not able to see.
We also use the 'google structured data addon' from tassos.gr and I don't know if this causes a conflict.

Kind regards,
Ian and stu
p.s. Username and Pwd will be PM'd.

Hi,

Thanks for the access, however, I'm not able to access it.
I'm currently located in Japan, on holidays at my relatives' home, and the website doesn't accept backend connections from Japan. Could you allow for it ?

Also, besides the email from Google, which seems quite generic, do you have more information in your Google Merchant account about which URL is "broken" ?

Hi,
it looks like products that are out of stock are showing up as 404 errors in large numbers. We think it relates to the google products plugin as you mentioned (e.g. 'include in stock products only' is set to 'No') but could be our sitemap.
We have unblocked Japan and France for access and an example of an affected product is;

- BODY TOOLS BLENDING SPONGE

Thanks again,
Ian and Stu

p.s. We've included an image of the violation list. Aside from the first two lines that just list everything. All of the other smaller numbered items link to 404 error pages relating to out of stock items.

Hi,

The biggest issue I can see is that the shipping information is missing for your products in the feed.
Based on support.google.com/merchants/answer/7052...shipping_and_returns the shipping information is required for shops in Australia, where you're based. The plugin has a shipping setting you can use to configure that.

Then, you also need to check the rules regarding healthcare and medicines for Australia:
support.google.com/merchants/answer/6150151?hl=en#australia
You need to be certified by Google and some types of products can't be advertised with Google Merchant. For these products, you need to exclude them. We've recently added a "Skip field" setting to the plugin, which allows you to exclude individual products from the XML feed.

Also, your phone number is not verified:
support.google.com/merchants/answer/10139041?hl=en

And some of your products are missing their GTIN:
support.google.com/merchants/answer/6098295?hl=en

The unavailable landing page issue is only for a dozen products. So it's not a big problem compared to all the others that you should deal with first.

Thanks for taking a look.
For shipping we've included the minimum;
AU::Standard:9.00 AUD,AU::Express:12.00 AUD
...but let me know if this isn't enough info. We only charge a flat fee and large items are only available for pick-up.

Regarding the 'skip field'. Can you give me a quick example of how to use it? The only products they mention for Australia is for pills that facilitate abortions. We do advertise these but don't actually sell them online. So, if you can let us know how to exclude them using the skip field (because they are available 'over the counter and only from a pharmacist' only) that would solve the problem. If it helps, the rule would be: if our 'product_access' field contains 's3' then it should be skipped.

We thought that the phone number was verified but Australia recently got rid of PSTN phones so we need to redo that one.

For the GTiN. Our products all have barcodes and related numbers which are held in the 'product_code' field. Is it sufficient to list the 'product_code' field in the GTiN field of the 'google products plugin' to map this across?

Thanks again for looking into this,
Ian and Stu

Hi,

The shipping should be fine.

For the skip field, as the inline documentation says, you need to create a custom product field, and provide a value in the custom field for the products you don't want to be included.

For the GTIN, you need to enter the product_code in the GTIN field, and you also need to set the identifier exists to TRUE.

Thanks,
We've done all of that and checked that the generated xml file no longer contains restricted products. Are you able to host the cron job to upload the xml file to google via ftp?

Regards,
Ian and Stu

Hi,

I'm not sure what you mean by that ?
Can you first manually upload the new XML file to your Google Merchant account ?
Did it solve the problems you tried to fix ?
Are you asking about setting up the automatic upload via FTP and you're asking about how to setup the cron task ?

Hi,
I've manually uploaded the file with fixes and will let you know how it goes.
Yes, I was asking about automating the upload using ftp. Google Feeds also have a fetch option but it wasn't well documented.

More soon. Many thanks,
Ian and Stu

Hi,

I would recommend to first make sure you make it work manually.
Once that's ok, you can easily automate it. Just enter a file name in the settings of the plugin and configure your cron task, and HikaShop will store the XML file in your website's root folder periodically. Then, you can provide the URL of the XML file to Google so that it can retrieve it.
support.google.com/merchants/answer/1215...3701-3176339969&rd=1

Hi,
the manual version is working with some products legitimately disallowed due to various issues (e.g. 404, no product image etc.). The google products plugin doesn't seem to be able to map existing fields like 'product_code' across to it's preset fields. Rather, it wants a dedicated new custom field to be created. Is this correct? We created one for the 'skip' field and can do this for other values but its seems strange to have to duplicate existing fields.
We're not confident about automating the upload of the xml file. Can you take a look and just check if the following fields have been set up and will work properly;
- FTP User Name
- FTP Password
- File Name
- Local xml file path
- Frequency

We're getting there and your feedback is greatly appreciate as usual,
Ian and Stu

Hi,

As I said, the product_code will be used for the GTIN if you enter "product_code" in the GTIN field. You don't need to create a custom field for it.

I tried to have a look, but I'm not able to login to your backend with the access you provided.
Could you please double check it ?

Hi,
I was able to log in using the credentials I sent to you and Japan is enabled. I'll pm them to you again. Apologies for that and I will double check the RSFirewall settings.
When I checked the information in the google merchant center, 'product_code' showed up instead of the mapped value.
Although this is in Joomla3. I will copy the working configuration over to the new Joomla5 replacement site that we are almost finished building.

Thanks again,
Ian and Stu

Hi,

I'm still not able to login to your backend with these new credentials.

I do see the login form, and I do enter the correct captcha.
But I keep getting the error "Username and password do not match or you do not have an account yet."

Hi,
I checked the logs and you're not entering the correct password. It may be a keyboard issue (not sure) so I'll pm you a picture of the credentials instead. Sorry about that.

Regards,
Ian and Stu

pm sent

Hi,

Ok, I see what the problem is.

It's not a keyboard issue. It's because is an HTML entity:
www.freeformatter.com/html-entities.html
It's converted by my browser to the number 9 automatically.
I would recommend avoiding using a # after a & when you're writing anything which can potentially be published on Internet.

Now, back to the topic. I was able to login now. First, the "Local xml file path" is wrong. I would recommend you look at the documentation of each setting when you hover on the label. There, it says:

You can optionally enter here a relative path from your website root directory (for example products/list.xml if you want it accessible on mywebsite.com/products/list.xml ) so that the plugin saves the file on your website on each cron

So, you need to enter the relative path of a xml file. Instead of yourwebsite.co.au/google you should enter google/Callaghan-feed2.xml
Then, the file would be available at yourwebsite.co.au/google/Callaghan-feed2.xml after the plugin process it once.

Regarding the GTIN, I would recommend first reading this:
support.google.com/merchants/answer/160161?hl=en
This explains the difference betwen MPN and GTIN.
In your plugin, you have activated the setting "Use product code as mpn". So the product_code is already used for the MPN.
If you enter product_code for the GTIN, it means that you'll have the same GTIN and MPN. It's probably not what you want. Or at least not for all the products.
I've set "product_code" in the GTIN field of your plugin and regenerated a XML. I didn't get any "product_code" in the XML, but I did get a "gtin" field with the proper value of the product_code for each product. So it seems to be working just fine. Please double check.

You cron task seems to work fine, so once you publish the plugin, after correcting the situation with the MPN/GTIN and the "Local xml file path", you should be good to go.

Thanks Nicolas,
that's clarified a lot of issues. The link to the google info about MPN and GiTN values has helped as well. I couldn't locate this info myself. Our supplier is pretty bad with inventory data and we spend most of our time writing regex to fix abbreviations and misspellings in product names. Luckily, we include brand names as part of this.
We really appreciate your looking into this during your trip away. You've gone above and beyond as usual!

Regards,
Ian and Stu

One more quick question. What internal hikashop field would you recommend using if we already use 'product_code' to upload the 'mpn' information. We can swap them round if necessary;

product_code = GTIN
??????????? = MPN

We have manufacturer code and haven't used them for uploading before because our supplier doesn't include one for every product. However, we can create a placeholder or insert other meaningful data.

Thanks,
Ian and Stu