Why Google checks trust pages
Shopping is a trust transaction: a stranger pays before receiving anything. Google's ad and free-listing policies therefore require the store to show who it is and what happens after the payment: identity (contact), dispute resolution (terms), data handling (privacy), and the two commerce promises (returns and shipping). A store missing them is not automatically rejected, but their absence is a documented cause of account-level and item-level rejections, and it lowers the ceiling on every appeal you ever file. Ad platforms behave the same way; Meta and TikTok reviews ask for the same pages.
| Page | What it must actually contain |
|---|---|
| Privacy policy | What data is collected, why, who it is shared with, and how to request deletion. Boilerplate alone is risky |
| Terms / conditions | Who you are (legal entity), what buyers agree to, governing law |
| Contact page | A real, reachable channel: address, form or email you actually answer |
| Returns / refund policy | Who pays return shipping, how long, refund method and timeline |
| Shipping policy (stores) | Costs, delivery times per region, carrier honesty |
How stores fail without noticing
- The pages exist but are not linked anywhere. A policy page reachable only by direct URL does not count for a reviewer, or for a crawler mapping your trust surface from the home page and sitemap.
- Template placeholders left in. "123 Travel Street" and lorem-ipsum contact blocks are common on theme starter content and read as a store that is not real. Reviewers check.
- Pages written for SEO, not policy. A returns page that is 400 words of keyword text with no actual policy is worse than none, because it signals the pages were built to pass a check.
- Checkout-domain mismatch. Policies on the marketing domain that do not match the domain shown at checkout confuse both shoppers and reviewers.
The most common version of this failure is pages that exist and were never linked in the footer. The check below detects exactly that, because it reads what a crawler can reach.
Check your pages in a minute
Run the free trust-pages check. Paste your store address and Shipwork walks your home page, sitemap and the pages it checks looking for the policy paths Google expects, and reports any that are missing from every place a crawler looks. For stores it also looks for the shipping policy, which ad platforms in most regions require. Free, no signup, nothing stored. And if you are missing pages, fix them this week: they are one template each, and they are the last rejection cause you can clear in an afternoon.
Related: Merchant Center requirements · every Merchant Center error, explained · full site audit
Shipwork reads your home page, sitemap and a set of pages, and reports every trust page Google and ad platforms expect (privacy, terms, contact, returns and shipping) that it cannot find. Free, no account, no signup. Paste your store address.
Check my trust pagesQuestions
Are privacy and terms pages required for Google Shopping?
Where should policy pages be linked?
Can I use a generated policy template?
Does the check need store access?
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