Unclear Expertise and Unsupported Health Claims
Observable evidence: Find product guides, educational articles, or category copy that makes health, efficacy, dosage, safety, or treatment-adjacent claims without a clear author, reviewer, evidence source, or update record. E-E-A-T is a quality concept used in Google's evaluator guidance, not a checklist that requires a specific badge or professional title. A wellness store should not invent credentials or imply medical review where none occurred.
Consequence: Readers may have difficulty judging whether health-related information is trustworthy, and weak sourcing can reduce the usefulness of content in a sensitive topic area. Do not describe a traffic loss during a broad core update as proof of a penalty unless separate evidence supports that conclusion.
Correction: Attribute content to the actual creator, add verifiable qualifications when relevant, cite reliable evidence already available to the business, and route claims that require specialist review to an appropriately qualified reviewer. Remove or rewrite claims the store cannot substantiate.
Owner: Editorial lead for attribution and sourcing; product or compliance owner for claim accuracy; qualified reviewer when the subject exceeds general retail expertise.
Verification: Recheck a sample of health-related pages and confirm that author or reviewer information is accurate, claims match the cited evidence, unsupported wording is removed, and no credential has been invented.
Example: A store selling herbal supplements publishes a Guide to Ashwagandha under an anonymous staff account even though the page contains statements that should be sourced or reviewed.
Severity: critical
Reusing Manufacturer-Provided Product Descriptions Without Added Value
Observable evidence: Compare live product copy with the manufacturer's feed and competing retailers. If the main description, benefits language, specifications, and usage wording are substantially identical, the page may offer little unique information beyond price and availability.
Consequence: Search systems may have many similar pages to choose from, while shoppers receive little store-specific help. The source previously said such pages can be buried on page 5+; treat that as an example of weak visibility, not a guaranteed outcome or a duplicate-content penalty.
Correction: Keep factual manufacturer data accurate, then add store-specific information that is genuinely useful: product format, size, ingredients as supplied, compatibility, shipping or pickup details, comparison context, and links to relevant categories. Do not turn the rewrite into unsupported benefit or efficacy claims.
Owner: Ecommerce content owner with product-data review from merchandising.
Verification: Diff the revised copy against the manufacturer source, confirm factual fields still match the product record, and inspect whether the page now answers purchase questions that the shared feed does not.
Example: A protein powder retailer republishes the same Ingredients and Benefits list as the wholesale portal and adds no store-specific buying information.
Severity: high
Allowing Faceted Navigation to Create Uncontrolled Indexable URLs
Observable evidence: Crawl category templates and record URLs produced by filters such as Organic, Gluten-Free, Vegan, Non-GMO, price, flavor, or brand. Check whether combinations are crawlable, indexable, internally linked, canonicalized, or blocked in ways that conflict with the intended search experience. A filter such as Under $20 may be useful to shoppers even when it does not deserve its own search landing page.
Consequence: Large numbers of near-duplicate filter URLs can make crawling, indexing, internal linking, and canonical selection harder to manage. Do not assume a fixed crawl-budget penalty; the practical risk is wasted crawl attention and fragmented page signals on a large catalog.
Correction: Decide which filtered states deserve standalone search pages based on real demand and unique value. For the rest, use a technically coherent combination of canonicalization, internal-link controls, parameter handling, or noindex where appropriate. Do not blanket-canonicalize pages when their content or intent differs materially.
Owner: Technical SEO owner with the ecommerce developer.
Verification: Recrawl the faceted paths, check indexability and canonicals, confirm that important categories remain reachable, and monitor whether unwanted filter URLs decline without blocking valuable pages.
Example: An online vitamin shop exposes 5,000 indexable URLs from Price Range and Flavor combinations even though most combinations contain near-identical inventory.
Severity: medium
Neglecting Search Information for Genuine Brick-and-Mortar Locations
Observable evidence: Compare each real store's Google Business Profile and website information with its actual name, address, phone, hours, services, pickup options, and location-specific details. Look for duplicate location copy, missing pages for real stores, incorrect business information, or pages created for places where no genuine location exists.
Consequence: Customers may struggle to confirm which store is relevant, open, or able to provide the product or service they need. Local search visibility can also vary by relevance, distance, and prominence, but this source does not prove that a specific profile field guarantees ranking.
Correction: Create a dedicated page only for each genuine physical location when there is enough useful location-specific information to support it. Keep business information accurate and maintain the Google Business Profile for customer utility. Ask eligible customers consistently for honest feedback without incentives, discouraging negative feedback, or selecting only satisfied customers.
Owner: Local marketing owner with store operations responsible for business-data accuracy.
Verification: Check the public profile and location page against operational records, confirm each location is distinct and useful, and test directions, contact details, hours, and relevant internal links.
Example: A regional health food chain uses a single Locations page with only addresses even though each physical store has different hours, pickup details, and local information that customers need.
Severity: high
Ignoring Informational Intent or Publishing It Without Evidence Controls
Observable evidence: Review Search Console queries, customer-support questions, onsite search, and category journeys. Identify research questions that the store could answer responsibly, then check whether current content is absent, thin, commercially biased, or makes health claims beyond the available evidence.
Consequence: The site may fail to answer research-stage questions that could help shoppers understand ingredients, formats, product differences, or store policies. That is a coverage gap, not proof that brand authority or acquisition cost will change in a particular direction.
Correction: Build content around genuine customer questions and connect it to relevant product categories only where the relationship is useful. Separate educational explanation from product promotion, cite appropriate evidence for health-related statements, and avoid diagnosing conditions or promising outcomes.
Owner: Editorial or content owner, with subject-matter review when the topic requires it.
Verification: Confirm each article answers a documented user question, sources sensitive claims, links naturally to relevant store pages, and avoids unsupported medical or efficacy language.
Example: A store selling sleep aids has only transactional melatonin pages and no responsibly sourced content addressing common questions about product formats, ingredients, or general sleep-hygiene information.
Severity: medium
Deleting Out-of-Stock or Discontinued Product Pages Without Checking Their Value
Observable evidence: Export product URLs marked temporarily unavailable or discontinued, then check internal links, external links, traffic, indexation, replacement products, and whether the item may return. A 404 is not inherently wrong for a permanently removed page, and preserving every old URL is not inherently right.
Consequence: Removing a useful or linked page without a replacement plan can strand users and waste existing references. Conversely, redirecting every discontinued item can create irrelevant destinations. The earlier claim that a 404 permanently loses all SEO value is too absolute.
Correction: For temporary unavailability, keep the useful page live with accurate stock status and an appropriate notification or alternative. For a permanently discontinued item, use a 301 only when there is a genuinely relevant successor or category; otherwise an honest removed-state response can be appropriate.
Owner: Ecommerce operations for inventory status, with technical SEO or development owning URL behavior.
Verification: Test the final status code and destination, confirm discontinued products are removed from active merchandising where appropriate, and check that users land on a relevant page rather than a generic or misleading redirect.
Example: A popular pre-workout supplement is discontinued and the store deletes its page even though the URL has 50 external backlinks and a relevant replacement product exists.
Severity: high
Letting Mobile Templates Become Slow or Unstable
Observable evidence: Test key mobile templates with field and lab performance data. Identify oversized images, video, JavaScript, third-party review or tracking scripts, layout shifts, and interaction delays. The source uses more than 3 seconds as an example threshold, but performance should be judged with the relevant Core Web Vitals and real-user context rather than a single universal load-time rule.
Consequence: Slow or unstable pages can frustrate shoppers, reduce usability, and make product discovery or checkout harder. Google uses mobile-first indexing, but do not claim that a slow template automatically causes a specific ranking or conversion loss.
Correction: Resize and compress media, use efficient formats such as WebP when appropriate, reduce unnecessary CSS/JS, defer noncritical third-party code, and use a CDN where it solves a measured delivery problem.
Owner: Frontend or performance engineer with ecommerce QA.
Verification: Rerun the same templates after deployment, compare field and lab metrics, inspect visual stability and interaction, and test the shopping flow on representative mobile devices.
Example: A wellness boutique homepage loads 10MB of lifestyle video assets before the primary shopping content becomes usable.
Severity: critical
