The email says your Google Merchant Center account is suspended for “Misrepresentation of self or product” — and nothing else. No product list, no specific error, no obvious next step. It's Google's vaguest policy, and its most common suspension. The good news: the signals Google checks are known, and most stores can clear them in a focused afternoon.
What “misrepresentation” actually means
Google isn't accusing you of fraud. The policy fires when the automated review can't confirm your store is a transparent, contactable business whose listings match reality. It judges your website as much as your feed — which is why fixing products alone rarely lifts it.
The recovery checklist
Work through every item — Google re-reviews the whole account, so one missed signal keeps the suspension in place.
1. Contact information, visible and real. A dedicated contact page with at least two of: physical address, phone number, email. In the site footer, not buried. The business name should match your Merchant Center “Business information” exactly.
2. Return, refund and shipping policies. Dedicated pages, linked from the footer, with concrete terms — timeframes, who pays return shipping, how refunds are issued. “Contact us for details” doesn't count. Shipping costs in Merchant Center must match what checkout actually charges.
3. Prices and availability that match. The feed price must equal the page price at all times — stale feeds after a sale are a classic trigger. Products marked in stock must be purchasable. If your feed updates daily but prices change more often, that gap is visible to Google.
4. A complete checkout. Google's crawler goes as far as the payment step. Broken carts, forced account creation with no guest option, or surprise fees at the last step all read as misrepresentation.
5. Professional basics. HTTPS everywhere, no placeholder pages (“lorem ipsum”, empty About), working links, a privacy policy. New domains with thin content get suspended more — add real substance before requesting review.
6. Consistent business identity. Domain, store name, legal entity on the terms page, and Merchant Center business info should all tell the same story. A mismatch between “About us” and the registered name on your invoices is enough.
Requesting the review
Fix everything first — you get limited review attempts (typically one per week, and repeated failures extend the cooldown). Then, in Merchant Center: Products → Diagnostics → Account issues → Request review. Confirm you've resolved the issues, submit, and expect an answer within about seven days. Don't edit the site mid-review.
Preventing the next one
Most re-suspensions come from drift: a sale ends and the feed lags, products go out of stock but keep advertising, a policy page gets lost in a redesign. A feed that refreshes automatically and flags mismatches before Google sees them removes the biggest class of triggers.
How Feedrobin helps
Feedrobin keeps your feed synchronized with your store — prices are never rewritten by rules, out-of-stock products are marked correctly so ads pause on their own, and the quality score surfaces the catalog issues that feed misrepresentation reviews. The website-side checklist above stays yours; the feed side runs itself.