We want to help you navigate the various eligibility requirements across our growing set of surfaces. This document contains the list of product issues and how they affect where that product can be shown.
What is an issue?
We have two types of issues:
| ❗ | Errors: | Issues that affect the eligibility status. |
| ⚠️ | Warnings: | Issues that don't affect the eligibility status, but might affect how and where the product is displayed. |
Both are important to fix, but the eligibility status is only affected by the errors. Therefore, you can have the status "Ready to show", but your products might still have issues that affect things like ranking.
What are the types of issues?
In the following article you see the list of possible issues divided into different categories: location, price, landing page, image and additional issues.
Location related issues
| Issue | Ads | Admissions | Experiences | Operator BM | Solutions & Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missing related POI | Not Required | ❗Error | Not Required | Not Required | Need to include related_locations in the feed for these products. If the provided location is not eligible, it will then become `None of the related POIs is eligible for the program` error |
| Missing related POI with admission | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Not Required | This is fine if the product does not provide an admission ticket. (e.g. tours). As some of the experiences are not necessary tours. |
| None of the related POIs is eligible for the program | Not Required | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | This error shows that the locations you sent are not eligible for the program. This might be because we don't match it to the right PlaceID, use "Find Location Matches" tool to send us the right PlaceIDs. If your location is not eligible, consider requesting Google to enable it. |
| Inconsistent duplicate related locations | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Not Required | Either delete one of the duplicates or make sure those that refer to the same location have the same attributes, like being marked as admission |
| Unrelated POI | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | The POI is not related to the product, consider removing it from the list of related locations. |
| Overtagged admission | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | A product option was incorrectly tagged as including admission to a POI. Consider removing the POI from the related locations or updating the relation type. |
| Undertagged admission | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | A product option was incorrectly tagged as not including admission to a POI. Consider updating the location relation type. |
| Missing operator location | Not Required | Not Required | Not Required | ❗ Error | If applicable, consider adding the name and location of the operator of the activity. |
| Operator location can not be matched | Not Required | Not Required | Not Required | ❗ Error | Operator location can not be matched. |
| Operator name and location mismatch | Not Required | Not Required | Not Required | ❗ Error | Confirm the operator name matches the name of the business at this address on Google Maps. |
More details can be found here. You can use the “Find Location Matching tool” to find the exact place ID for your POI.
Price related issues
| Issue | Ads | Admissions | Experiences | Operator BM | Solutions & Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missing price | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Add price |
| Price policy violation | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Review price policy and comply with it. |
| Unsupported or incorrect currency code | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | Apply supported or correct currency code |
| Actual price on the booking page is higher than the price you provided | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Review the price you provided and match the price with the actual price. |
| Actual price on the booking page is lower than the price you provided | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | Review the price you provided and match price with the actual price. |
| Price option isn't actually free | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Review price if it is free. Set the right price. |
| Price option is actually free | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | Review price if it is not free. Set as free. |
| Price unavailable for booking within the next 30 days | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Check the product is bookable within next 30 days. |
| Restricted price availability | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | At least one price option has restricted availability, such as being available once a week during off-peak hours or once a month. Review the Things to Do price policies for guidance regarding price availability |
| Price is hard to discover | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | Make price more visible and easier to be found. |
| Invalid group price | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error> | Make group price valid. |
| Not a standard adult price | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Check if price is standard adult price. |
| Price doesn't include taxes and fees | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | Include taxes and fees to price. |
| Wrong default currency displayed | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | Make default currency correct. |
Landing page related issues
| Issue | Ads | Admissions | Experiences | Operator BM | Solutions & Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missing landing page | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Point to landing page. |
| Landing page policy violation | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Review landing page policy and comply with it. |
| Landing page error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Check error for landing page. |
| Product option not found on landing page | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Add product option on landing page or remove the option from the feed. |
| No mention of operator on landing page | Not Required | Not Required | Not Required | ❗ Error | This operator doesn't appear on the landing page. Possibly because its location is associated with an incorrect operator. Make sure you've got the right location and that the landing page clearly mentions the operator name or address. |
“Landing page guidelines” provide more recommendations on how to solve those issues.
Product info related issues
| Issue | Ads | Admissions | Experiences | Operator BM | Solutions & Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missing categories | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | ⚠️ Warning | Add categories |
| Missing title | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Add title |
| Missing description | Not Required | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Add description |
| Missing "TextFeature" formatting | Not Required | Not Required | ⚠️ Warning | Not Required | Add TextFeature format |
"Title and description guidelines" provide more best practices about product info.
Image related issues
| Issue | Ads | Admissions | Experiences | Operator BM | Solutions & Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missing image | ❗ Error | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Add image |
| Image link broken | ❗ Error | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Fix broken image link |
| Image link decoding error | ❗ Error | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Resolve image link decoding error |
| Image link too big | ⚠️ Warning | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Make image link shorter |
| Image too small | ⚠️ Warning | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Set image size appropriately |
| Image uses a single color | ❗ Error | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Not to use image with a single color |
| Promotional overlay on image | ❗ Error | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Remove overlay on image |
| Processing failed | ❗ Error | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Try processing again |
| Image not crawlable due to robots.txt | ❗ Error | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Update your robots.txt file to allow user-agents "Googlebot" and "Googlebot-Image" to crawl your site |
| Image not retrieved (crawl rate too slow) | ❗ Error | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Ensure that Google can access and crawl your images; for example, you can increase crawl rate in Google Search Console or move images to a faster server |
| Image link pending crawl | ❗ Error | Not Required | ❗ Error | Not Required | Wait for the product image to be crawled (up to 3 days) |
"Image and photography guidelines" provide more details on the image best practices.
Additional issues
| Issue | Ads | Admissions | Experiences | Operator BM | Solutions & Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Generally ineligible | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Review policy and comply with it |
| Inconsistent INVENTORY_TYPE for the same operator | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Another product is marked as "official" for an operator with the same name. Products related to the same operator must be of the same INVENTORY_TYPE. |
| Restricted Things to Do type | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | At least one product option is about a restricted service type. Please review Things to Do policies for guidance about restricted businesses and services |
| Options are actually for different products | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Please upload separate products that include all options for each. All options within a product should have the same product title, rating, reviews, etc. |
| Low rating | Not Required | Not Required | Not Required | Not Required | Improve the rating of the product |
| Official product targets list view landing page | Not Required | Not Required | Not Required | Not Required | Official products cannot link to list view landing pages. Either remove the "official" tagging or remove the list view landing page. |
| Multiple official products from different sources | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | There are official products ingested from more preferred source. |
| Pending review | ❗ Error | ❗ E/canrror | ❗ Error | ❗ Error | Google needs to review this product before serving it to users. This process can take several days and only starts once no other critical issues appear in this section. |
| Related POI is not supported by the program | Not Required | Not Required | Not Required | Not Required |
If you have questions about the issues with your products, do not hesitate to contact us.