How to: solve unsupported country for CSS program

Have you received the message “unsupported country for CSS program”? Luckily, there is a way to fix this issue. As you might know, the Google CSS programme is only available within Europe. That being said, sometimes merchants see this issue while switching to a Google Premium CSS partner when they are active in countries outside of the CSS program. Below you will find a solution and instructions to switch your merchant center to a CSS, like Producthero.

Serving products outside of the EU

We are opted in to serve products in all countries, also countries outside of the CSS program. If countries outside of the EU get disapproved, this is because there are multiple Merchant Centers for your domain “https://example.com”.

If this is the case, then you should create a new Merchant Center with Google CSS and claim the Merchant Center. This will not impact your current campaigns, so don’t worry about doing this. Google will send you warning messages about claiming this new Merchant Center and how it may impact your Shopping Campaigns. However, you may ignore the warnings, because if you are running ads via Producthero CSS the Producthero Merchant Center does not need a claim to serve shopping ads.

Step 1: Create a new Merchant Center and claim the domain in the new Merchant Center, if you don’t know how to do this, follow steps 3.1 and 3.2 in this article. 

Step 2: After claiming the domain go to ‘Shopping ads setup’ via the settings, as seen on the screenshot below:

Step 3: On the lower end of this page you can find the CSSs that are active for your domain. If you want to use your Producthero Merchant Center for products outside of the EU, you have to see “Selected for placing products outside of Europe”, like in the screenshot below:

If you do not see that it is selected, hover over the Producthero row. At the end of the row a 3-dots icon will appear. Click on the dots to change the settings (next to the arrow in the screenshot below). 

Step 4: If it is not already active, choose “make this the CSS for placing products outside of Europe”. 

The message “unsupported country for CSS program” is gone

You should now be able to use a premium CSS partner. If you still have issues, feel free to contact our support team. We are the #1 premium CSS partner and have helped thousands of organizations to switch to Google CSS. We work with transparent pricing and offer a 30 day free trial. Next to the Google CSS program, you will also be able to use our Optimizer tool. This allows you to easily optimize your product titles and improve your ad performance.