Why Google rejects a store with no privacy, returns or contact pages

What the error means

Merchant Center and ad platforms expect a store to present as a real business: a reachable contact channel, a privacy policy, terms, a returns and refund policy and, for stores, shipping information. Missing or unreachable trust pages are a documented cause of account-level and item-level rejections.

Why Google rejects it

Shopping puts a stranger’s money ahead of the goods. The policies are the store’s written promise of what happens after payment, and their absence signals a store that cannot be held to its word. Reviewers and automated checks look for the pages, and they count only when a visitor can actually reach them.

How to fix it

1. Publish the five pages: privacy, terms, contact, returns/refund and shipping. Store platforms ship templates — fill in your real legal entity, addresses and timelines.
2. Link every one of them in the site footer. A policy page nobody can reach does not count — reviewers and crawlers look there first.
3. Remove template placeholders. A "123 Fake Street" contact block or lorem-ipsum terms page reads as worse than none.
4. Make the values real and consistent: the return window stated on the page must match what you actually honour, because a mismatch is its own misrepresentation problem.

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