Broken links and 404s: what Merchant Center expects

Links that work. Google’s Merchant Center help page “How to fix: Check if your online store is fully functional” tells you to remove broken links. Its definition of broken is plain: links “shouldn’t lead to 404 errors, or redirect back to the home page instead of the intended destination”, and it asks you to check that your social media pages are linked correctly. That middle bit catches a lot of stores. Sending every dead address to the homepage hides the 404, but the shopper who clicked “Returns” still isn’t looking at a returns policy. That is not a fix; it is a disguise. Click every header, footer and policy link on a phone and a computer, then run a link checker over the whole site. Fix returns, shipping, privacy, terms, contact and About first. Point each broken link at its current page, or redirect a removed page to its closest real replacement, never to the homepage by default. Check again after every theme change, address change or migration.

Google's “How to fix: Check if your online store is fully functional” page opens with the job in one line: “Make sure your website is fully functional and customized for your business and products. Remove any placeholder images, templated text, or broken links.” Its third step is “Check that your website doesn’t have any broken links.” and it spells out what counts as broken: “Links on your website need to be responsive and shouldn’t lead to 404 errors, or redirect back to the home page instead of the intended destination.” The same step asks you to “Check that your social media pages are linked correctly on your website.”

That middle clause catches a lot of stores. A blanket redirect that sends every dead URL to the homepage hides the 404, but the shopper who clicked “Returns” still lands somewhere that is not the returns policy. A redirect to the homepage does not fix a broken link; it disguises one, and Google's page names it as broken all the same.

Product Experts on Google's Merchant Center Community say the same in their own walkthrough of suspensions: broken links and redirects sit on their list of common pitfalls, next to placeholder text and copied policy pages. Their advice fits in five words: “Ensure all links are functional.”

Links break in batches, not one at a time. A theme change rebuilds the menu, a platform move changes every URL pattern, a tidy-up deletes the collections the homepage still points at. The link check belongs in the launch list for each of those jobs, not in a yearly spring clean.

The free scan follows the links in your menu and footer. It reports a broken returns, shipping, privacy or contact link as a failure and flags other broken navigation links, so the ones a worried shopper clicks first get fixed first. It does not check links to your social profiles, so click those yourself. Every link check is listed on the misrepresentation checker. For the product links you submit in your feed, see landing page errors.