Regular followers of teclan’s blog posts over the years will have previously noted our recommendation back in 2012 that Google required your checkout pages to be encrypted by an SSL certificate (golden padlock).
Well the non-SSL website pigeons are now coming home to roost.
We have now seen Google starting to enforce this policy by forcibly removing shopping feeds, adword product listings and merchant centre validation for websites not implementing an SSL within the checkout stages.
Snippet of Google’s policy
Payment and transaction processing, as well as collection of any sensitive and financial personal information from the user, must be conducted over a secure processing server (SSL-protected, with a valid SSL certificate – https://).
Advertisers remain responsible for ensuring that they are compliant with local laws and regulations on the subject of privacy and data protection. Google may suspend any account or product listing found to be in violation of our policy or the law.
You can see that Google is taking violations of its shopping policies very seriously.
If you do not have an SSL within your shopping cart pages (and promote products using Google shopping) then you will eventually be identified as a merchant who is violating Google’s policies and therefore you will see your Google shopping feed removed and your account blocked.
We know from direct experience that it can take up to 1 week to try and remedy the situation and get the suspension revoked.
Our recommendation (again…)
Make sure you have an SSL within your checkout stages on your ecommerce website. There are several benefits to having the SSL in place; adherence to Google policies, increased customer confidence and greater security when capturing data on-line.
If you are a teclan hosting customer then we can offer a range of SSL’s which will delivery the security that is required. If you are hosted elsewhere then we would be happy to offer advice on which are the best SSL’s available for your business.