Project Background: A GMC Suspension Triggered by “Misrepresentation”

A brand-authorized dealer running a Shopify storefront had its Google Merchant Center (GMC) account suspended over “misrepresentation.” String Global assisted the client with a site audit, content fixes, and appeal preparation. The client later confirmed the GMC account was restored.

The focus of the engagement was to clarify the relationship between the seller and the manufacturer — and to resolve conflicting information across pages — while preserving the site’s design and product presentation.

The Challenge: Keep the Brand Story, Make the Seller Unmistakable

The client holds a brand authorization and wants to keep showcasing the manufacturer’s production capabilities, technical background, and product materials. For professional buyers, that content is a meaningful signal of product origin and supply capacity — and an important part of the site’s marketing.

The audit, however, found phrasing such as “our factory” and “Factory direct” on some pages. Combined with the brand logo and manufacturer introduction, a visitor could read the dealer’s site as the manufacturer’s own storefront. On top of that, some legacy policy pages still carried an old company name or contact details that no longer matched the footer and contact page.

The fix had to serve two goals at once: keep the substantiated product background, and make it clear who the customer is actually transacting with.

These findings came from our own audit. Google’s notice did not identify specific triggering pages, so we worked from business records and site content — and did not treat any single phrase as the confirmed cause of the suspension.

Identity Fixes: Establish Who Sells, Then Adjust the Copy

Before editing anything, we confirmed with the client the actual selling entity, the public contact details, and the scope of the brand authorization. The homepage, header, About Us, and contact pages were then adjusted accordingly.

On the About Us page, we separated the dealer’s introduction from the manufacturer’s background: the first part explains who operates the site and what sales and support services it provides; the second part keeps the manufacturer’s production and technical materials, with a clear indication of whom they describe.

Specific copy was adjusted item by item to match its actual meaning:

  • Phrases like “our factory” were re-pointed to the manufacturer to reduce identity confusion;
  • Certification descriptions now state whose certifications they are, with the client verifying applicable products and supporting documents;
  • Warranty, retail after-sales, and custom business lines are described separately so that service scope is unambiguous.

This approach kept the brand content the client needs while making the seller, the manufacturer, and after-sales responsibilities easier to distinguish.

Policy Fixes: Cross-Source Review for Consistency

Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, refund, and shipping pages were the other major workstream.

We reviewed these pages together, checking that company names, contact channels, and transaction rules were consistent — and untangled the wording around return conditions, cost responsibility, refund process, and delivery times.

During the work we found that Shopify’s content sources make omissions easy: theme text, custom page content, system policies, and translated content may live in different places. The header might already show the correct entity name while a legacy clause quoted further down the page had never been updated.

So we checked the rendered theme and the backend source separately, traced issues to their specific content source, and clarified who owns each fix. String Global handled the site’s wording, structure, and technical audit; the client confirmed the actual business rules and maintained the backend materials.

This step resolved the current information conflicts — and reduced the chance that future updates change one place while missing the others.

Live-Page Re-Checks and Appeal Preparation

After the edits, we kept checking public pages, the blog, other language versions, as well as search descriptions and article structured data. Lingering legacy wording and information residue found in these checks were compiled into a fix list with page-level locations.

This step let us verify what the site actually presents to the public, rather than assuming the fixes took effect from a local preview.

Appeal preparation was built around the actual changes. We helped the client organize the operating entity, brand authorization relationship, completed fixes, and available supporting materials — and used support tickets to clarify outstanding questions.

For the identity verification requirements in the account notice, we advised the client to follow the official process separately, rather than treating the verification notice as confirmation that the rest of the site had passed review.

Result and Takeaways: An Identity-Consistency Checklist for Dealer Sites

After the fixes and follow-up communication, the client confirmed the GMC account was restored. The result recorded in this case refers only to the GMC account and does not cover the linked Google Ads account.

The project kept the original site design and product presentation as much as possible, concentrating changes on business identity, content ownership, and information consistency. The available feedback is not enough to attribute the reinstatement to any single phrase or edit.

For dealer storefronts, presenting the brand and the factory’s capabilities goes hand in hand with stating your own role clearly. Authorization materials, site copy, and transaction policies should correspond to one another — and an appeal should accurately reflect the fixes that were actually made.

This work serves account review, and it also helps customers understand product origin, transaction terms, and after-sales arrangements more clearly.

If your storefront is dealing with a GMC “misrepresentation” issue, String Global can start from the account notice, site content, and business records to help locate information conflicts, divide the remediation work, and prepare the appeal materials.