Short answer. Google’s title specification says not to include promotional text: price, sale price, sale dates, shipping, delivery dates or your company name, and its Shopping ads policy bars gimmicky words such as “FREE” and “!!!”. Move the offer out of the title and into sale_price, shipping and promotions, where Google shows it as a badge instead of disapproving the product.
| Shown in Merchant Center as | Promotional text in title |
|---|---|
| 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 “Promotional text in title”
Google’s title specification is explicit: 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 reason is not prudishness. Google shows the price, the sale price and the shipping cost itself, from the attributes meant for them, as badges shoppers recognise. The same words in the title duplicate that, can contradict it when the sale ends, and make the title less useful for matching what the product is.
Why it happens
- Sale campaigns edited into titles on the storefront and never removed.
- Shipping promises in titles (“Free UK delivery”) as a conversion tactic.
- 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 and express the offer through the attributes Google shows: set Compare-at price for sales (it becomes sale_price), and configure free shipping in Shipping settings so Merchant Center can display it. 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 shows a strike-through. 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
Corrected titles are re-evaluated on the next fetch and the product is re-approved within 24–72 hours. Because titles also drive matching, expect impressions to shift as Google re-indexes the new text.
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 deliberately ignores “new” and “plus”, which look promotional and belong to half the brand names in electronics; a false positive costs more trust than a missed one. The fix preview shows each title 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 the shipping attribute or your account’s shipping settings, with a cost of 0. Google then shows “Free shipping” under the ad itself, in a format shoppers recognise, and the title stays about the product.
Is “New” promotional?
Not when it describes the product’s condition, and Google has a condition attribute for that. As a marketing word it is borderline and rarely worth the risk; our check leaves it alone because it appears in too many product names.
Can I keep the promotional title on my product page?
Yes. The rule applies to the title in the feed. Your page can say what it likes, though a very different page title can affect how Google matches the two.
Sources
- Title [title] and structured title [structured_title] — Google Merchant Center Help
- Shopping ads policies — Google Merchant Center Help
- Product data specification — Google Merchant Center Help