Misrepresentation is Google's catch-all. It covers everything from a missing phone number to fake countdown timers, and the notice is deliberately vague — a specific list would be a circumvention manual. So the work is diagnostic, not clerical.
Why appealing immediately makes it worse
The instinct is to hit "request review" within the hour. Do not. Reviews are not free: each failed appeal is another data point telling Google the problem is unaddressed, and repeat appeals from an unchanged store harden the decision.
Fix first. Appeal once. With a short note saying what changed.
The eight things that usually trigger it
1. Thin business information
No real contact page, no address, no working phone or email. This is the most common finding and the fastest fix. Google needs to believe a buyer could reach a human if the order went wrong.
2. Policies that do not say anything
A returns policy has to state real timelines, who pays return shipping, and in what condition. Generated boilerplate mentioning another company's name is worse than nothing.
3. Price or availability mismatch
The feed says €39, the page says €45. Or a currency converter app rewrites prices client-side. Google compares the two and reads the difference as a bait.
4. Hidden delivery times
If fulfilment takes three weeks and the store does not say so anywhere before checkout, that is misrepresentation in the plainest sense. Say it. Stores that state long shipping honestly do fine.
5. Fake urgency
Countdown timers that reset on refresh. "Only 3 left" that never changes. Struck-through prices the product never sold at. Reviewers look specifically for these, and they check twice.
6. Claims the product cannot support
Health, income or performance claims — including in reviews and user content you display. Where most supplement stores quietly die.
7. Brand names you do not sell
Supplier or lookalike brand names in titles read as counterfeit, whatever you meant by them.
8. Account or domain history
The hardest category. Sometimes the store today is fine and the flag comes from something linked to it. These do not always come back, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling.
We published the same checklist we use internally: the disapproval checklist. Sixteen items, in the order that matters.
Keep selling while the appeal is in review
A Merchant Center suspension stops Shopping and the shopping half of Performance Max. It does not stop Search, Demand Gen or YouTube. Stores routinely sit dark for weeks waiting on a review while two thirds of Google was available the whole time.
What a real appeal looks like
Not a copy-paste form. A short, specific note: this is what we found, this is what changed, here are the URLs. If you cannot name what you fixed, you are not ready to appeal.
And if you have worked through everything and it is still down, send us the notice. We will tell you straight whether we think it is recoverable — no retainer to find out.