Fix “Unable to show image” in Google Merchant Center
Typical Merchant Center message: Unable to show image
Reviewed October 14, 2026 against Google’s published rules.
Google reports “Unable to show image” when Merchant Center has not been able to retrieve the image URL from your product data.
Causes in Google’s article
- A slow crawl. Google says it can take up to 30 days for an image to be crawled and retrieved, which is common for newly submitted products or pending bulk image updates.
- The image URL is not live or crawlable, or the image changed while the URL stayed the same.
- Missing or incorrect HTTP headers, especially on dynamically generated images. The content-type and content-length headers must be passed.
- Your robots.txt file blocks Googlebot or Googlebot-Image.
How to fix it
- Find out which cause applies to your account.
- Make sure your servers do not return 500 errors, and pace large bulk image updates in batches, for example 10% a day.
- Confirm the image URLs in your data are live and crawlable. When you change an image, use a new image URL and update it in your product data.
- Send the content-type and content-length headers correctly. Google says not to set cache-control.
- Allow both Googlebot and Googlebot-Image to crawl your site, for example with an empty Disallow rule for each. 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.
- Google says images are typically recrawled within 3 days when you use a new URL, but it can take up to 30 days.
Check your own catalog for these issues
FeedGuard’s live check opens the main image of each product page and shows when it does not load. It does not read your server headers or robots.txt.
Google’s requirement: support.google.com/merchants/answer/12159032. 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.