Monitoring & audits
Google Merchant Center audit checklist
A useful Merchant Center audit connects account configuration, processed product data, storefront evidence, and issue history. It should produce a prioritized correction list—not just a screenshot of today's issue count.
No card required · Read-only Google access
1. Establish account and destination scope
Confirm which Merchant account, countries, websites, data sources, and marketing methods are in scope. Review account-level diagnostics before sampling individual products. An unresolved account issue can have a broader effect than dozens of isolated product warnings.
2. Reconcile the product inventory
Compare the products you expect to submit with the processed products Google currently recognizes. Separate pending, healthy, limited, and disapproved counts. Check source fetch or API timestamps, rejected rows, and whether discontinued offers remain in the account.
3. Inspect product-data quality
Sample both high-value and randomly selected offers. Check titles, descriptions, images, price, sale price and timing, availability, condition, brand, GTIN, MPN, product category, and distinct IDs. For variants, confirm every purchasable offer has its own ID and a consistent item group ID where appropriate.
4. Compare the storefront experience
Open submitted URLs for the same country, currency, and variant. Verify the visible and structured price, availability, product identity, canonical destination, mobile accessibility, redirects, and checkout consistency. A feed can be internally valid while disagreeing with the live store.
5. Review shipping and returns
Confirm shipping services cover the intended countries, charges and currencies are consistent, and product-level overrides do not conflict with account settings. Review return-policy configuration and its consistency with the customer-facing policy. This is an operational check, not country-specific legal advice.
6. Use history to set priorities
Group recurring, newly detected, expanded, and resolved issues. Prioritize account-critical problems and traffic-bearing products where performance identity is deterministic. Keep zero-traffic issues visible without pretending that impressions equal revenue.
- Account-level and policy diagnostics
- Product status by destination
- Feed/API freshness and processing
- Price, availability, identifiers, images, shipping, and returns
- Landing-page and structured-data consistency
- Variant grouping and unique IDs
- Historical issue patterns and confirmed recovery
What a CommerceVigil scan covers
A read-only CommerceVigil scan imports current Merchant diagnostics and processed products, groups affected offers, and uses supported evidence and performance matches carefully. It does not edit the feed, crawl every checkout state, provide legal certification, or guarantee Google approval.
Frequently asked questions
How often should Merchant Center be audited?
Audit after material catalog or site changes and monitor continuously if product eligibility is commercially important.
Is an issue count enough?
No. Scope, severity, destination, affected products, recent traffic, and lifecycle all add essential context.
Does the audit change products?
CommerceVigil uses read-only Google access and does not modify Merchant products.
Free Scan
See what Google currently reports for your account.
Inspect current products and issues without changing Merchant data.
No card required · Read-only Google access