Fix “Can’t access product images” in Google Merchant Center
Typical Merchant Center message: Can’t access product images
Reviewed October 14, 2026 against Google’s published rules.
Google reports this when it cannot access product images submitted through the image link attribute because your website’s robots.txt file blocks them. Products still show for now, but Google says the issue will soon cause them to be disapproved.
How to fix it
- Update robots.txt so that both Googlebot and Googlebot-Image can crawl the full site. Google’s example uses an empty Disallow rule for each user-agent.
- In Shopify, robots.txt is generated from a robots.txt.liquid template. If you or an app customized it, look for rules that block Googlebot or Googlebot-Image.
- Optionally test the setup with the URL Inspection tool.
- Open Products, then Needs attention, and filter for this issue to see the affected products.
- To fix many products at once, download the .csv list of affected products from the Needs attention tab, correct the image links in your product data and re-upload it.
- Google says the errors should clear within a couple of days after the fix.
Check your own catalog for these issues
FeedGuard’s live check shows when a product image cannot be loaded, but it does not read your robots.txt. Check that file yourself.
Google’s requirement: support.google.com/merchants/answer/15092852. FeedGuard checks your data against published rules; Google makes the final approval decision.
Independent guidance. Google’s current documentation and decisions control. FeedGuard is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Google or Shopify, and this guide is not an official Google Help Center page.