Guide

Missing Product Image in Merchant Center: How to Fix

Fix Google Merchant Center's missing product image and unable to show image issues: broken or blank image_link, crawl delays, HTTP headers and robots.txt.

Shown in Merchant Center as Missing product image Unable to show image

Last verified · 5 min read

Google Merchant Center reports Missing product image when a product has no valid image URL in its image_link attribute, and products without valid image URLs are not approved (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Missing product image). A related issue, Unable to show image, means the URL is present but Google has not yet been able to retrieve the image (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Unable to show image). The fixes differ, so start by checking which one you have.

Missing product image: causes

As of October 2026, Google lists three causes (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Missing product image):

  1. The image_link attribute is blank in your primary data source.
  2. The image URL is broken (for example, it returns a 404 error) or Google can't access it.
  3. A third-party e-commerce platform hasn't synced recent image updates to Google.

The URL itself must follow Google's format: it includes http or https, uses ASCII characters only, is 1–2,000 characters long, and replaces symbols and spaces with URL-encoded entities (Google Merchant Center Help, Image link [image_link]). A relative path such as /images/shirt.jpg is not a valid image link; Google needs the full address.

Unable to show image: causes

Google lists these reasons it may not have retrieved an image yet (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Unable to show image):

  • Slow crawling. Image crawling can take up to 30 days, and newly submitted products have a natural fetching delay.
  • Images not live, or changed at the same URL. The URL must be live and crawlable. A new image at an unchanged URL can take up to 6 weeks to show.
  • HTTP headers. Unexpected headers can stop Google caching the image, mainly for dynamically generated images. Content-type and content-length must be passed.
  • robots.txt. A robots.txt file can stop Google from crawling your images.

How to fix missing images

For a few products: in Merchant Center open Products > Needs attention, filter to the affected products, select Edit product, add a valid image URL and select Save. For many products: download the .csv list of affected products, confirm each one has a valid URL in image_link in your product data, and upload the corrected data again (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Missing product image). Google says changes may take 24–72 hours to show on the Needs attention page (same source).

If your feed comes from a store or plugin, find out why it sends no image: products without a featured image, an image column mapped to the wrong field, or a relative image path. In Product Feed Master you choose which source column feeds image_link in the field mapping, and a prepend transformation rule can turn relative paths into full URLs on every sync.

How to fix unable to show image

Google's fixes (Google Merchant Center Help, How to fix: Unable to show image):

  1. Crawl speed: make sure your servers aren't returning 500 errors, adjust your crawl rate in Search Console or move images to a faster server, and spread large image updates over several days (Google gives 10% a day as an example).
  2. Changed images: when you replace an image, give it a new URL and update it in your product data. With a new URL, recrawls typically happen within 3 days.
  3. Headers: pass content-type and content-length correctly, and don't set cache-control.
  4. robots.txt: allow both Googlebot and Googlebot-Image to crawl your site.

Google notes that while a new image is processed, the previous image may keep appearing for up to 30 days (same source).

Frequently asked questions

Why does Merchant Center say my image is missing when it shows on my site?

The URL in the feed may differ from the one your site uses, be a relative path, or be blocked to Google by robots.txt. Google must be able to fetch the exact URL in image_link.

How long does Google take to crawl a new product image?

Recrawls with a new image URL typically happen within 3 days but can take up to 30 days. A new image at an unchanged URL can take up to 6 weeks.

Which image formats does Google accept?

JPEG, WebP, PNG, GIF, BMP and TIFF, as listed on Google's image link attribute page.

Sources