Untrustworthy Promotions: how to fix it on Shopify.

If your Google Merchant Center account was suspended for untrustworthy promotions, Google’s reviewers flagged something on your storefront as deceptive - even if your intent was simply to convert more.

This is one of the easier suspensions to reinstate once you identify the trigger. The problem: Google doesn’t tell you which specific pattern they flagged.

The three patterns that trigger it (in order of frequency)

1. Fake or auto-resetting countdown timers

The single most common cause. Apps like “Countdown Timer Bar” or “Sales Pop” that show a timer counting down to a “sale ending in 3 hours” but reset every time the page loads. Google’s crawler visits twice and sees the same “ending soon” message - instant flag.

Fix:

• Disable any countdown timer app showing fake urgency
• If you keep timers, configure them to use real expiration dates persisted server-side, not client-side cookies
• Verify by visiting the product page in incognito twice, 4 hours apart - the time remaining should differ

2. “Sale price” that isn’t a real sale

Showing a strikethrough price (e.g., $199 $99) when the product was never sold at $199. Google’s reviewer can sometimes verify this via Wayback Machine archives or your own sale_price_effective_date metadata.

Fix:

• Audit every product with a strikethrough price
• For each, confirm the higher price was an actual selling price for at least 30 days before the sale started
• If not, remove the strikethrough or use a “compare-at price” that’s genuinely your MSRP / list price
• Match sale_price and sale_price_effective_date in your feed exactly to your storefront

3. Discount stacking that exceeds policy

Showing “50% OFF” on the listing page, then “extra 20% off at checkout”, then “free shipping above $50” - when in reality the customer experiences a confusing partial discount.

Fix:

• Pick one discount mechanism per product surface - listing page OR checkout, not both
• If you stack discounts, the storefront price displayed must match what the customer pays at the final order summary, not the partial discount before code application

Other triggers worth checking

• Hidden minimum order amounts: showing “Free shipping” without disclosing “on orders over $50” until the cart screen
• Bait pricing: a product listed at $9.99 in the feed but only available in a $99.99 bundle on the PDP
• Fake reviews / star ratings without source attribution: especially if Aggregaterating schema.org markup is missing or fabricated
• Shipping costs that appear at checkout but weren’t disclosed in the shipping policy

The reinstatement process

The same playbook as misrepresentation applies. Build a Reinstatement Report before reapplying. Document every promotional change with a before/after screenshot and a timestamp. Wait at least 48 hours after each fix for Google’s crawler to re-evaluate. Use a re-evaluation detector to confirm the productstatuses delta turned positive before requesting review.

Two-attempt cool-down ladder applies to this suspension type as well - don’t burn an attempt by reapplying before fixes are visible to Google’s bots.

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