Shipping on your site vs Merchant Center: how to match them

Your shipping page, your checkout and your Merchant Center shipping settings must give the same cost and delivery time for the same order. When they drift, fix the one that is wrong. It is usually the one nobody touched after the last carrier change, the last price rise or the end of the Christmas rush.

Critical4 min read

By Edvinas Ivanauskas How the guides are reviewed

You run this check yourself

Our scanner can’t see inside your Google accounts, so this one’s on you. Work through the checklist below without running a scan.

Why this matters

Google has a fix page for this exact problem: “How to fix: Inaccurate shipping costs (due to inconsistent shipping costs between your feed and the checkout pages on your website)”. It opens with “Your account has either been warned or suspended due to this error”, and defines the error as “The shipping rates in your Merchant Center shipping settings or product data are lower than the shipping rates shown on your website during checkout.” The reason it gives is plain enough: “Shipping costs are a major decision factor for online customers.” The fix is to update the settings or the [shipping] attribute to match your website, and “If you’re unable to provide exact shipping rates, you can slightly overestimate the costs provided in Merchant Center.”

The account shipping settings page sets the standard: “The shipping costs you submit to Merchant Center should be as close as possible to what's on your website. Overestimate the figures you submit if you can't match the costs closely.” It also names two ways settings drift without anyone deciding to change them. Product-level data wins: prices and delivery times set in the [shipping] attribute “will override account-level settings for the matching location for that product” whenever they include a price. And a Shopify shipping app can leave Merchant Center behind: “The shipping rate details can’t be imported automatically in Merchant Center if you use a third-party app to generate shipping rates in Shopify.” In that case you set the costs up by hand, and keep them up by hand.

Delivery time drifts the same way. The “arrives by” date in a listing comes from the handling and transit times in your settings; the promise on your shipping page comes from whoever last edited it. Product Experts on Google's Merchant Center Community put it simply: each policy “must accurately describe how the business actually operates.” Two records, one business.

Manual check: StoreVerifier cannot log in to Merchant Center, so this side-by-side is yours. The free scan covers the website half. It flags a shipping page with no cost, no handling time or no delivery time, and reports as a failure a clear free-shipping promise that the checkout then charges for. The full list is on the misrepresentation checker. For the settings themselves, work through the shipping settings audit; for what checkout may charge, see shipping cost at checkout.

Typical evidence

Compare the public promise with account settings

StoreVerifier can capture the public shipping page. Compare its transit time, cost, and coverage with Merchant Center shipping settings yourself, taking the relevant destination and service into account. This is a manual reconciliation task, not an automated account check.

fieldGMC settingwebsite page

transit days3–5 business days7–10 working days

free thresholdfree over £30free over £50

standard cost£3.99£3.99

countriesUnited KingdomUK mainland only

3 of 4 fields differ in this example — reconcile them manually.

Update both sources simultaneously from a single canonical shipping document. Every carrier change, peak adjustment, or threshold change must go to GMC and the website at the same time.

The public signals this check looks for:

The website raised its free-delivery threshold from £30 to £50 and Merchant Center still s…
The website raised its free-delivery threshold from £30 to £50 and Merchant Center still says free over £30.
The carrier changed and the shipping page shows the new delivery times while Merchant Cent…
The carrier changed and the shipping page shows the new delivery times while Merchant Center shows the old ones.
A peak-season notice (“allow 7–10 days until January”) went up on the site and never came …
A peak-season notice (“allow 7–10 days until January”) went up on the site and never came down, or never reached Merchant Center.
A shipping app calculates costs at checkout that Merchant Center has never heard of
A shipping app calculates costs at checkout that Merchant Center has never heard of.
Product-level [shipping] values from an old feed override the account settings you updated…
Product-level [shipping] values from an old feed override the account settings you updated last month.

What it looks like once it is right

A single shipping sheet lists £4.95, free over £50, handling 1 business day, transit 2–4. The shipping page, a tested checkout and every Merchant Center shipping policy show those values, each change dated.

Common mistakes

Common mistake

Website: free delivery over £50, otherwise £4.95, 3–5 business days. Merchant Center: free over £30, £3.99, 1–2 days. A £40 basket is free in the listing and £4.95 at checkout.

Self-check steps

Write one master record of your shipping terms: for each country and service, the cost rule, any free-delivery threshold, handling time, transit time and cutoff.
In Merchant Center, go to Shipping and returns, open every shipping policy, and put its values beside the master record.
Download a sample of products and check whether any carry a [shipping] value; if they do, those values override the account settings for that product and need checking too.
Run test baskets on the website for each country: one below and one above each free-delivery threshold. Note the cost checkout charges.
Wherever the three disagree, decide what you actually charge and deliver, then correct the website, the settings or the product data to match. If you cannot match a cost closely, round the Merchant Center figure up, never down.
If a shipping app sets your checkout costs, update Merchant Center by hand every time you change the app’s rules.
Change the master record first, then the website and Merchant Center in the same sitting, and date each change.

A shipping-change checklist

When carrier, timing, cost, or coverage changes, review the public page and Merchant Center settings together. The point is a truthful customer promise, not a claim that a page scan can certify account alignment.

✓

Carrier change

Trigger: New carrier contract signed

Update GMC shipping service transit times. Update website shipping page. Document the change.

✓

Seasonal extension

Trigger: Peak period begins / ends

Update GMC transit window. Update website shipping page dates. Set calendar reminder to revert both.

✓

Free threshold change

Trigger: Pricing strategy update

Update GMC cost rule. Update website shipping page threshold. Update any ads or homepage banners referencing the old threshold.

A shared shipping configuration document that both GMC and the website are updated from is the most reliable way to keep them in sync. The document is the source of truth.

Questions merchants ask

What happens if my Merchant Center shipping cost is lower than my checkout?

Google's fix page for inaccurate shipping costs describes exactly that case, settings or product data lower than the cost at checkout, and is written for accounts that have been warned or suspended for it. Update the settings or the [shipping] attribute to match your website.

Can I set a higher shipping cost in Merchant Center than on my website?

Yes, slightly. Google's shipping settings page says to overestimate the figures you submit if you cannot match the costs closely, and the [shipping] attribute page says to match or overestimate the cost users would pay, while warning that overestimating excessively may hurt product performance.

Why do my Merchant Center shipping settings not update when I change Shopify?

If a third-party app generates your Shopify shipping costs, Google says the details can’t be imported automatically and you need to set them up manually in Merchant Center. Update them yourself whenever the app’s rules change.

Remediation

Risk signal

Nobody decides to let shipping drift. A carrier changes, a threshold moves, an app gets installed, and one of three records quietly falls behind. Keep one master record, change all three together, and round up in Merchant Center when in doubt.

PriorityTreat this and any other highest-severity findings as first-priority work, then document each fix.

EvidenceRecord the current state before each change, apply the fix, then capture the corrected state so every change is evidenced.

Similar cases

Sources

Community guidance

Written by Product Experts, the users Google recognises for their answers on its Merchant Center Community forum. Often stricter than Google’s help pages, and not Google policy.

How to fix your Merchant Center suspension (Misrepresentation), 2026Merchant Center Community · Product Expert guide — support.google.com

Last reviewed 23 Sep 2026.

That is one issue. The library documents 134.

The free scan lists what it finds on your store. The paid report adds the affected pages, captured evidence and step-by-step fixes. Start free, with no account needed.