Contact information Google Merchant Center expects on your website
By Terry Ecom · Last reviewed 2026-09-25 · Source: Google Merchant Center Help
Contact is the fastest identity check on the audit list. If a reviewer cannot match the site to the account, the rest of the appeal is harder.
The four fields
Merchant Center Help: legal business name, physical address, phone number and email, clearly listed and consistent with Merchant Center settings. Other methods (a form, social profiles) can exist in addition — they are not a substitute for those four.
A contact block a reviewer can verify
The difference is easiest to see side by side. Both of these are real patterns on Shopify stores; only the second gives a reviewer anything to match against the account. The business below is invented.
Vague
Questions? Use the form below and our team will get back to you as soon as possible.
Actionable
Glow Studio Ltd · 14 Example Street, Manchester M1 1AA, United Kingdom · +44 161 000 0000 · hello@glowstudio.co.uk · Phone support Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm UK time. Or use the form below.
Where to put them on Shopify
A dedicated Contact page plus the footer on every template. Use an email on your primary store domain. Keep the same string in Merchant Center business information — “Your Store” on the site and “Your Store Ltd” in the account is a mismatch.
Consistency is the requirement, not presence
Google’s wording is that the details must be consistent across the website and the Merchant Center account. Most stores that fail this item do publish contact details — they publish different ones in different places. The usual mismatches:
- The footer shows the brand name, the Contact page shows a different trading name, and the legal company name appears nowhere on the site.
- The phone number in the footer is not the one on the Contact page, often because one was typed into the theme and the other into a page.
- The address is only a city and country, so there is nothing to compare with the address in the account.
- The support email is a Gmail or Outlook address while the store runs on its own domain.
- A policy page quotes an older address or company name that was never updated when the Contact page was.
What GMC Scout flags
Missing store email, phone or address; contact emails that do not match the store domain; a missing contact path entirely. It also reads the Contact page for customer-service hours and a time zone — those are Scout checks for a usable contact page, not items Google publishes as a requirement.
We extract what is on the page. We do not log into Merchant Center to confirm the account-side copy — you still have to make those match by hand.
Checklist before you request review
- The legal business name appears on the site (footer or Contact page), spelled exactly as in Merchant Center.
- The full physical address is shown — street, town, postcode and country, not only a city.
- One phone number a customer can call, identical everywhere it appears.
- A contact email on the store’s own domain.
- The footer, Contact page and any policy that quotes these details all say the same thing.
- The Contact page is linked from every page and opens without logging in.
- The same four values are in the Merchant Center business information.
If Merchant Center has already flagged your store
FAQ
I am online-only. Do I still need a physical address?
Google’s published list includes a physical address consistent with the account. We do not invent an exemption for online-only brands.
Is a Gmail address a problem?
GMC Scout flags contact email that is not on the store domain. Google’s onboarding notes also prefer email hosted on the store domain.
Does the phone have to be a local number?
Google does not publish a country-code rule we can cite. It does have to be a real number a customer can use, and it has to match the account.
Do I need the company name, or is the brand name enough?
Google’s list says legal business name. If you trade under a brand, show both — for example “Glow Studio is a trading name of Glow Studio Ltd” — so the name in the account can be found on the site.
Sources
Related guides
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