> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://ctracker-docs.keywordrush.com/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://ctracker-docs.keywordrush.com/affiliate-networks/shop-status-policies.md).

# When a shop is paused, rejected or disappears

Shops do not stay the same forever. A merchant pauses their programme for a season, a network rejects your application, or a shop simply stops appearing in the list your network sends.

You decide what happens to the shop page each time. The three settings live in `Cashback Tracker` → `Settings` → `General`, under **Shops and shop pages**.

### The three things that happen

**Paused** — the network says the programme is on hold. It usually comes back. Your tracking links may or may not still pay during a pause.

**Rejected** — your application to that merchant was turned down, or an existing approval was withdrawn. Your links will not earn anything.

**Disappeared** — the shop stopped appearing in the network's list altogether, without being marked paused or rejected. Merchants leave networks; this is how you find out.

### What you can choose

Each of the three has the same two options:

* **Keep the page** — the shop page stays published exactly as it is.
* **Unpublish the page** — the page is moved to draft, so visitors stop seeing it and search engines stop finding it.

Sensible defaults, and the ones the plugin ships with:

| Setting                  | Default            | Why                                                                                                                              |
| ------------------------ | ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Paused shops**         | Keep the page      | Pauses are usually temporary. Unpublishing and republishing costs you the page's search ranking.                                 |
| **Rejected shops**       | Unpublish the page | You cannot earn from it, and a "Go to shop" button that pays nothing is worse than no page.                                      |
| **Shops that disappear** | Unpublish the page | You cannot earn from it either, and by the time this fires the shop has already been absent from three clean refreshes in a row. |

### The safety rule for disappearing shops

A shop is not treated as gone the first time it is missing.

It has to be absent from **three refreshes in a row**, and — this is the important part — **only refreshes that read the whole list without losing anything are counted.**

If a refresh finished with "completed with problems", it does not count towards those three, in either direction. The plugin will not remove a shop on the strength of a request that failed.

In practice, with daily refreshes, a shop that genuinely leaves a network disappears from your site about three days later. On weekly refreshes it takes about three weeks. A network having a bad afternoon changes nothing at all.

### If a page is unpublished and you disagree

Set the policy back to **Keep the page** and publish the page yourself. Nothing is deleted at any point — an unpublished shop page is a draft, with its content, images and reviews intact.

Pages the plugin unpublished are the only ones it will ever republish by itself, if the shop comes back and your policy allows it. A page you drafted by hand stays drafted.

### Finding affected shops

The [Shop catalog](/shops-and-cashback-rates/shop-catalog.md) lists every shop from every network with its current state, so it is the quickest way to see what a network has done lately.

Its **Status** column shows the state, and the tabs above the table count them — so **Inactive (12)** tells you at a glance that twelve shops have been retired. A shop that has started going missing but has not been retired yet reads **missing 2 runs** under its status, which is the warning you get before anything disappears. **Last seen** is the date a refresh last found it.

### Related

* [Loading shops from a network](/affiliate-networks/loading-shops.md)
* [Shop pages](/shops-and-cashback-rates/shop-pages.md)