PW Merchant Check organises findings into priority levels so store owners can decide where to begin. It scans local WooCommerce product records without connecting to a Google account, changing product data or submitting products to Merchant Center. The result is a preparation report, not a Google diagnostic or approval decision.
This guide explains what Critical, Important and Suggestion results mean; how to review price, purchasability, image, identifier, brand and variation findings; and when to run the audit again. It is suitable for store owners, agencies and catalogue managers preparing e-commerce sites in Türkiye or managing WooCommerce stores that sell internationally.
What the product audit actually examines
The product audit reviews information stored in the WooCommerce catalogue. Depending on the product type and available data, it can inspect titles, descriptions, prices, publication and stock status, product images, SKU values, global identifiers, brand signals, category assignment, variable-product structure and basic purchasability.
The scan is read-only. It does not rewrite a title, invent a barcode, select a brand, change stock, generate an image or publish a draft. This distinction is important because only the merchant can confirm the truthful value for a real product. Automatic correction could introduce inaccurate information and create a larger problem than the original omission.
Why results are divided into priority levels
A catalogue containing hundreds or thousands of products may produce many findings. Treating every finding as equally urgent would make the report difficult to use. Priority levels help separate issues that can stop a normal purchase journey from weaknesses that require correction or human confirmation.
- Critical: a serious local condition that can prevent a valid, trustworthy or purchasable offer and should be reviewed first.
- Important: a material data weakness that should be corrected after critical issues.
- Suggestion: an improvement opportunity or a finding whose meaning depends strongly on product context.
- Passed: the expected local signal was detected, although manual quality review may still be necessary.
A priority label expresses remediation order inside PW Merchant Check. It is not the status of the same product in Merchant Center. A locally passed item may still have a Merchant Center issue that cannot be seen without account access, and a local suggestion may be entirely legitimate for a particular product.
What Critical means
A Critical result generally points to a condition that undermines the basic offer. Examples include a product without a usable price or a published product that cannot be purchased under its current WooCommerce configuration. Such issues deserve immediate attention because a customer may reach the page but be unable to complete the expected transaction.
Begin by opening the exact product in the public storefront, not only in WordPress administration. Confirm its displayed price, currency, stock message, variation choices and Add to cart control. Continue through the cart and checkout without placing an unnecessary real order. If the product is intentionally not for sale, decide whether it should remain published as a catalogue item or be excluded from the future Merchant workflow.
Do not interpret Critical as a claim that Google has suspended or disapproved the product. PW Merchant Check has no access to the Merchant Center account. It means that the local WooCommerce record contains a serious preparation problem or deserves immediate manual investigation.
What Important means
An Important result identifies a meaningful weakness that can affect product clarity, data completeness or reliable matching. Missing images, weak essential content or incomplete product data may appear at this level depending on how the check is defined. The product might still be purchasable, but it is not ready to be treated as a strong, complete offer.
Review Important results after Critical findings. Correct the underlying WooCommerce data using information supplied by the manufacturer, your verified product records or the genuine characteristics of a product you manufacture. Never fill fields with placeholders merely to turn a warning into a pass.
What Suggestion means
A Suggestion is not necessarily an error. It can identify an opportunity to improve a title, description, classification or product attribute, or it can indicate that the plugin could not confidently detect a value in the current WooCommerce structure.
For example, brand information may be stored in a custom attribute or another plugin’s taxonomy that PW Merchant Check does not recognise. A handmade one-of-a-kind item may legitimately have no manufacturer-assigned GTIN. A simple product naturally has no variation children. These findings require context rather than automatic data entry.
What a Passed result does and does not prove
Passed means that the plugin found the expected local signal. It does not guarantee that the value is accurate, persuasive, legally sufficient or identical to the data later submitted to Google. A product can have a non-empty title that is still vague. It can have an image that is low quality. It can have a numerical price that differs from a cached page or external feed.
How to review products without a valid price
A product offered through a standard online purchase journey needs a clear, valid price. Open the WooCommerce product editor and inspect the regular price, sale price, sale schedule, tax display and currency configuration. For variable products, inspect each purchasable variation because the parent may not contain a directly usable price.
Then view the public page in a private browser window. Confirm that the displayed price is visible before purchase and does not change unexpectedly after a variation is selected, an item is added to the cart or the checkout address is entered. Legitimate tax or shipping calculations can vary by market, but the customer should not encounter a misleading base offer.
If prices are updated by an exchange-rate, ERP, marketplace or bulk-import integration, check whether the most recent task completed successfully. Review both the WooCommerce stored price and the rendered storefront price. Clear relevant caches after a correction and test again.
Do not enter a symbolic value such as 1 TL to silence a finding when the actual product has no established sale price. If the item requires a quotation rather than an ordinary online purchase, it may not belong in the same Merchant product workflow as directly purchasable goods.
How to review products reported as not purchasable
Purchasability depends on more than the presence of an Add to cart button. The product must be published and accessible; required options must work; stock rules must permit purchase; the cart must accept the item; and checkout must be available for the intended customer and location.
Check the following points:
- Is the product published and publicly visible?
- Is it marked in stock, on backorder under a truthful policy, or out of stock?
- For a variable product, is at least one genuine variation enabled, priced and in stock?
- Can the customer choose every required option?
- Does the Add to cart action succeed?
- Does the item remain in the cart with the expected price and quantity?
- Is an appropriate payment method available at checkout?
- Can the store deliver to the advertised destination?
A sold-out product is not automatically a technical fault. The key is whether its availability is truthful and consistently represented. If an item has been discontinued, archive or exclude it appropriately rather than keeping a misleading purchasable status. If backorders are accepted, explain expected fulfilment clearly.
How to review missing product images
A missing featured image is a direct content weakness. Add a clear image that accurately represents the exact product. Avoid generic placeholders, logos used instead of products, misleading accessories and watermarks that obscure the item. For variable products whose appearance differs by colour or material, use variation-specific images where practical.
A detected image still needs manual quality review. Open it at full size and on the product page. Check resolution, focus, cropping, background, orientation and mobile presentation. Verify that image URLs load publicly over HTTPS and are not blocked by hotlink protection, login requirements, robots controls or an expired media-delivery URL.
Alternative gallery images can improve customer understanding, but they do not replace the need for a truthful primary image. Show only items included in the offer or make accessories and contextual props unambiguous in the description.
How to interpret missing SKU findings
SKU is the merchant’s internal stock keeping unit. It can help maintain stable catalogue management, identify variations, reconcile inventory and diagnose import or synchronisation problems. Give each relevant product or variation a stable, unique SKU under your own catalogue rules.
An SKU is not a GTIN or EAN. Never copy an internal SKU into a global-identifier field merely because both are identifiers. Their issuers and purposes are different. Keep SKUs stable where possible so integrations and reports continue to refer to the same product.
How to interpret missing GTIN or EAN findings
A GTIN is a manufacturer-assigned global trade identifier; EAN is a common GTIN format used in Europe. According to Google’s official guidance, merchants should provide correct identifiers when they exist and must not invent, guess or copy identifiers from similar products. Products without assigned identifiers require different truthful handling.
When PW Merchant Check reports a missing identifier, first determine whether the product actually has one. Inspect the manufacturer’s packaging and official documentation, or obtain the value from an authorised supplier. Confirm that the code belongs to the exact product and variation, not merely to the same model family.
Do not use your SKU, a random barcode generator, the GTIN of another colour or a competitor’s value. If the product genuinely has no assigned GTIN—such as certain handmade, vintage, one-of-a-kind or custom-manufactured goods—record and submit that fact according to the applicable product-data method rather than fabricating a number.
Google explains unique product identifiers and correct handling in its official unique product identifier guidance and the GTIN attribute documentation.
How to interpret a missing brand result
The brand should identify the real brand under which the product is sold. Confirm the name from the product, packaging and manufacturer information. Use consistent spelling and avoid inserting the store name as the brand of third-party goods.
If you manufacture the product or sell a genuine private-label product, your own brand may be appropriate. Google’s official brand attribute guidance explains that the store name can be used for products the merchant manufactures or private-labels. That does not justify replacing another manufacturer’s brand with the retailer’s name.
A plugin may fail to detect brand data stored in a custom taxonomy, a theme-specific field or another integration. If the public page and export mapping already contain the correct brand, verify the field path instead of creating a duplicate attribute. Duplicate sources can later produce conflicting values.
How to interpret variable products without valid variations
A variable WooCommerce product needs usable child variations. A parent record may describe a shirt, for example, while each size and colour combination contains its own SKU, price, stock and image. If no valid variation exists, the customer may see the product page but be unable to make a selection or purchase.
Open the Attributes and Variations sections in WooCommerce. Confirm that attributes are enabled for variations, that expected combinations exist, and that each active variation has a truthful price and stock state. Remove impossible or obsolete combinations instead of leaving them as confusing selections.
Test the public page. Select several combinations, including an in-stock and an out-of-stock option. Check whether the image, price, stock message and SKU update correctly. On mobile, ensure that selection controls remain visible and usable.
A simple product should not be converted into a variable product just to satisfy a suggestion. Variation findings matter only when the product genuinely has selectable differences such as size, colour, material or capacity.
How to review title findings
A product title should identify the actual item clearly. Include meaningful characteristics that help distinguish it, such as brand, product type, model and a genuine variant detail. Avoid keyword repetition, promotional slogans, all-capital text and claims that are not supported by the product.
Compare the title in WooCommerce, the public product page and the data source that will eventually send the product to Merchant Center. If a feed or API integration constructs a different title, a local title pass does not prove that the submitted value is correct.
For a Turkish e-commerce site, use natural Turkish that customers understand. If the same catalogue serves English, German or another language, review every translated title independently. Machine-generated translations can alter brand, measurement or variant meaning.
How to review description findings
The description should explain what the product is, its important features, material or technical characteristics, intended use and included items. It should match the actual offer and the product shown in the images. Replace empty tabs, sample text and manufacturer copy that includes another retailer’s details.
Do not hide decisive information exclusively inside an image, PDF or accordion that fails to load. Customers should be able to understand the offer on mobile devices. Avoid unsupported superlatives and absolute promises.
A non-empty description can still be inadequate, so read a sample of passed products. Pay particular attention to bulk-imported catalogues where the same generic paragraph may have been applied to unrelated items.
How to interpret category findings
WooCommerce categories help organise navigation and can support reliable catalogue mapping. A product placed only in a generic category may still function, but specific and truthful categorisation makes maintenance easier. Use a hierarchy that reflects how customers browse without creating dozens of nearly identical categories.
Why false positives can occur
WordPress stores can be extended through custom fields, product add-ons, multilingual plugins, subscription systems, booking tools and external inventory services. A value visible to customers may be calculated dynamically or stored outside the standard field that an audit expects. Caching can also show an older public state after an administrator edits a product.
When a finding appears wrong, verify the local record, the public page and the relevant integration mapping. Document the reason before ignoring it. A false positive is a detection limitation, not evidence that every related product is correct.
Recommended correction order
- Resolve products with no valid price.
- Resolve products that customers cannot purchase.
- Correct misleading stock, status or variation behaviour.
- Add accurate primary product images where missing.
- Correct titles and descriptions that fail to identify the offer.
- Add genuine manufacturer-assigned GTIN, EAN, MPN and brand data where applicable.
- Improve SKU consistency and category organisation.
- Review suggestions and documented exceptions.
- Clear caches and retest the public purchase journey.
- Run a new PW Merchant Check product audit.
This order protects the customer journey first, then improves identification and catalogue quality. In a large store, correct a small representative group before applying a bulk change. Verify the outcome and create a backup before a major import or database-wide update.
How to manage results in a large catalogue
PW Merchant Check scans products in controlled groups of 100 to reduce sudden load on ordinary WooCommerce hosting. Keep the Product audit page open while automatic continuation is running. The progress display shows how much of the catalogue has been scanned.
Group corrections by issue type, but do not make blind bulk edits. For example, missing images may require individual assets, while an import mapping error might explain hundreds of missing brand values. Fixing the source mapping can be safer than editing each product manually.
Prioritise active products with traffic and stock, then address the remaining catalogue. Include draft, private, archived and discontinued items in your business decision: determine which products should remain candidates for external publication rather than trying to make every historical record active.
When the product audit should be run again
Run a new audit after correcting a meaningful group of products and clearing relevant caches. Also repeat it after a catalogue import, product migration, theme or checkout change, currency conversion update, inventory integration change, multilingual rollout or substantial variation edit.
A new audit checks the current WooCommerce state. It does not continuously monitor products in the background. If another system changes prices or stock after the scan, the saved report represents the earlier moment and should not be treated as live inventory evidence.
What PW Merchant Check cannot see
Because it does not connect to Google, PW Merchant Check cannot read Merchant Center account warnings, product processing states, destination eligibility, account-level policy decisions, review status or the exact data held by Google. It also does not know whether an external feed, spreadsheet or third-party API changed a value after reading WooCommerce.
For account diagnostics and product submission management, use the relevant Merchant Center interface or an authorised Merchant API solution. PW Merchant Check is the free local preparation layer: it helps improve the source store before or alongside those external processes.
Practical verification checklist
- All Critical findings were opened and manually reviewed.
- Every active product has a truthful visible price.
- Stock status matches the actual ability to fulfil the order.
- At least one intended variation can be selected and purchased.
- Primary images load publicly over HTTPS and represent the item.
- Titles and descriptions identify the offer without misleading claims.
- SKUs are stable and are not confused with GTINs.
- Manufacturer-assigned identifiers are accurate; none were invented.
- Brand values identify the genuine manufacturer or valid private label.
- Categories and multilingual content were reviewed.
- Cart and checkout were tested on desktop and mobile.
- A new audit was completed after corrections.
Frequently asked questions
Does a Critical result mean Google rejected my product?
No. Critical is a PW Merchant Check local priority label. The plugin does not connect to Merchant Center or read Google’s decisions. It means that a serious WooCommerce preparation issue requires immediate review.
Should I fix every Suggestion?
Not automatically. Review the product context. Some products legitimately lack a global identifier or variations, and some values may be stored in a custom field the plugin does not detect. Correct real weaknesses and document valid exceptions.
Can I enter a random EAN to remove a warning?
No. Use only the identifier assigned to that exact product by the manufacturer or authorised standards process. Google explicitly advises merchants not to invent, guess or reuse identifiers from similar products.
Is SKU the same as GTIN or EAN?
No. SKU is the merchant’s internal inventory reference. GTIN is a global trade identifier, and EAN is a GTIN format. An internal SKU must not be placed into a GTIN field.
Why is a product reported as not purchasable when it has an Add to cart button?
The product may be out of stock, missing a valid variation, blocked by a required option, restricted by location or failing later in the cart or checkout. Test the complete customer journey and inspect the WooCommerce configuration.
Why is my brand reported missing even though it appears on the page?
The brand may be stored in a custom taxonomy, generated by a theme or held in another plugin’s field. Confirm the value and its export mapping before adding a duplicate brand source.
Does a Passed result mean the product will be approved?
No. It only means the expected local signal was detected. Accuracy, Merchant Center data, account status, policies and other external factors remain outside this result.
Does PW Merchant Check change products automatically?
No. The product audit is read-only. It does not alter prices, stock, images, titles, identifiers, brands, categories or variations.
Does the audit send catalogue data to PW Feed or Poyraz Web?
No. The audit works locally in WordPress and saves its summaries in the site’s own database. It does not send audit results to PW Feed or Poyraz Web for remote scoring.
How often should I repeat the audit?
Repeat it after meaningful corrections and after imports, migrations, currency or stock integration changes, theme changes affecting purchase controls, and major catalogue updates. The plugin does not perform continuous external monitoring.
Can the audit read current Merchant Center product errors?
No. It uses no Google API connection. Merchant Center account diagnostics and product processing issues must be reviewed in the authorised account interface or through an appropriate API solution.
Is PW Merchant Check free?
Yes. PW Merchant Check is free and has no Pro tier, licence code or paid feature restriction. It is an independent WordPress and WooCommerce preparation tool.
Final reminder
Use the product audit as a structured starting point: correct Critical findings first, inspect Important items, evaluate Suggestions in context and manually sample Passed products. Make truthful changes based on the real product and test the public buying experience after every substantial correction.
PW Merchant Check is not developed or endorsed by Google. Its results and readiness indicators are not Google scores, product approvals or guarantees. Final Merchant Center decisions remain Google’s responsibility, and legal, commercial and product-data accuracy remain the merchant’s responsibility.