Google’s title specification says not to include promotional text such as price, sale price, sale dates, shipping, delivery date or your company’s name, and its Shopping ads policies list gimmicky use of words, punctuation or symbols, such as “FREE”, “f-r-e-e” and “F₹€€!!”, among what does not meet the editorial requirements. Move the offer out of the title and into sale_price, shipping and promotions.
| Shown in Merchant Center as | Additional or promotional info |
|---|---|
| Attribute | title |
| Effect | Policy violation |
| Where to find it | Products → Needs attention, then filter by this issue |
| Free check | Reported by the free feed check |
What Merchant Center means by “Additional or promotional info”
Google’s help page for “Additional or promotional info” says it is raised when one or more attributes, such as the title or the description, contain promotional text or text that is irrelevant for the attribute; this page covers the title.
Google’s title specification says: don’t include promotional text, and it lists what that covers, price, sale price, sale dates, shipping, delivery date, other time-related information, or your company’s name. The Shopping ads policies add the editorial rule against gimmicky use of words, numbers, letters, punctuation or symbols, with “FREE”, “f-r-e-e” and “F₹€€!!” as the examples. A title that carries “SALE”, “20% off”, “free shipping” or “buy now” breaks one or both, and the product can be disapproved under the editorial requirements.
The title specification says to include this information with the other attributes, such as sale price or shipping. During a sale, Google shows the sale price as the current price, and the original price may show along with it (sale_price specification).
Why it happens
- Sale campaigns edited into titles on the storefront and never removed.
- Shipping promises in titles (“Free UK delivery”).
- Shop name appended to every title by a theme or an SEO plugin, which the export picks up.
- Urgency words and punctuation: “HOT DEAL!!”, “Buy now”, “Limited time”.
- Prices in titles from marketplaces where that was the convention.
How to fix it
In Shopify
Remove the words from the product title. For a sale, set a Compare-at price above the price: FeedRobin’s Google feed sends the compare-at price as price and the price as sale_price, unless a price sheet sets the prices for the feed’s currency. Set free shipping in Merchant Center’s shipping settings. If a theme appends the shop name to the page title, that is a page-title setting, not the product title, and does not enter the feed; check which one the export reads.
In WooCommerce
Edit the product name to describe the product only. Put the sale in the Sale price field; our free connector sends it as sale_price with the regular price as price, which is how Google can show the original price next to the sale price (sale_price specification). Free shipping belongs in WooCommerce shipping zones and Merchant Center’s shipping settings.
In a CSV or XML feed
Strip the promotional phrases from title and tidy the separators they leave behind. Move offers into sale_price and sale_price_effective_date, shipping into shipping or account-level shipping settings, and promotions into Merchant Center’s Promotions. A title should read as the product would be named on a shelf: brand, product, the attribute that distinguishes this variant.
How long until Merchant Center clears it
After the titles are corrected and the product data is uploaded again, check that the issue is no longer listed on the Needs attention page. Google’s help page “Additional or promotional info” says the changes may take 24–72 hours to show there.
What FeedRobin does about it
The free check reports titles containing promotional phrases: “sale”, percentages off, “free shipping” and “free delivery”, “best price”, “buy now”, “hot deal”, double exclamation marks, and their Romanian equivalents. It does not flag “new” or “plus”. The fix card shows up to two titles with the phrase removed and the separators tidied, so “Jacket - 20% off” becomes “Jacket” and not “Jacket -”, and you can apply the same rule in your own export.
Questions merchants ask
Where do I put “free shipping” if not in the title?
In your account’s shipping settings in Merchant Center, or in the shipping attribute with a price of 0. Google’s shipping specification says to include free shipping by submitting 0 as the price of the shipping attribute, and to use the account shipping settings first.
Is “New” promotional?
Google’s title specification does not list it among the promotional text to leave out. For a product’s condition, Google has the condition attribute, with the value new. The free check does not flag “new”.
Can I keep the promotional title on my product page?
The title specification applies to the title in your product data, and says it does not always need to be identical to the content of your landing page, but both should refer to the same product. Google’s Shopping ads policies apply the editorial requirements, including the one on gimmicky use of words and symbols, to merchant sites as well as listings.
Sources
- Title [title] and structured title [structured_title] — Google Merchant Center Help
- Shopping ads policies — Google Merchant Center Help
- How to fix: Additional or promotional info — Google Merchant Center Help
- Sale price [sale_price] — Google Merchant Center Help
- Shipping [shipping] — Google Merchant Center Help
- Condition [condition] — Google Merchant Center Help
- Product data specification — Google Merchant Center Help