What counts as a shipping mismatch
Google compares the shipping values declared in your feed or Merchant Center shipping settings against what their crawler sees on the landing page and at checkout. A mismatch is flagged when these diverge — even if the difference seems small or conditional.
Price shown vs checkout price
Free shipping advertised in the feed but a shipping charge appears at checkout — even as a secondary or optional option — is enough to trigger a flag.
Delivery time mismatch
Your feed declares "1–3 days" but the product page or checkout shows "5–7 days" or no delivery estimate at all. Delivery time inconsistencies are flagged at scale.
Conditional shipping not matching
Shipping settings configured for free shipping over a threshold, but the feed promotes it as unconditional — or products just under the threshold showing free shipping in ads.
Where shipping mismatches usually hide
- Merchant Center shipping settings are configured correctly but the CMS or checkout plugin applies different rules dynamically.
- Free shipping promotion is live sitewide but expired — shipping costs returned but the feed value was not updated.
- Product-level shipping override in the feed conflicts with the account-level shipping table.
- Shopify or WooCommerce shipping zones have conditions that do not match the flat shipping value in the feed.
- Currency or region-based shipping costs differ from what the feed declares for the target country.
- Third-party delivery calculator at checkout adding handling fees not disclosed in the product listing.
Before submitting a review request
Test the full purchase flow as Google would see it. Do not rely on what you know your settings say — check what actually renders.
- Add 3 to 5 of your flagged products to a fresh guest checkout session and record exactly what shipping costs and delivery dates appear.
- Compare those against the shipping values in your feed file and your Merchant Center shipping settings.
- Fix every gap you find — not just the most obvious one. Google tends to flag batches.
- If your shipping is conditional (free over £X), make sure the conditions are declared in the feed and in Merchant Center shipping settings.
- Document what changed with screenshots or a timestamped change log before requesting review.
Not sure which products are flagged or where the gap is?
The free diagnostic will read your specific error message and tell you what it most likely means. If you need a full shipping configuration review with a ranked fix list and evidence file for your appeal, that is the £199 audit.
Try the free diagnostic Book the £199 audit