Google has today (October 7th 2013) published a communication to merchants concerning the eligibility of products available for search in Google Shopping.
They have stated that they have implemented changes to ensure that all products displayed in search results adhere to their program policies.
These changes have resulted in the removal of certain products or types of products from Google Shopping; some products that were previously displayed in results may no longer appear and some queries in Google Shopping may show less results or return no products.
This is not unexpected. For some time, we have been aware of marked inconsistencies between the long standing Adwords policies on certain product types (eg vitamins and supplements), and those governing whether products appear in Shopping. It would seem that Google is now making sure that their policies will be more consistent, and it will be interesting to see whether that will cover other areas such as trademarks and brand protection in the fullness of time.
As a merchant, you need to be aware that this may lead to a number of products being removed from search in Product Listing Adverts and Shopping, with a potential worsening of PLA/Shopping performance as a result.
