How to fix: Unable to show image

Your new image is being processed. If you had a previous image, your previous image will continue to appear on Google for up to 30 days.

On this page

Reasons why the issue is happening
How to fix the issue
Fix your products in Merchant Center
Next steps

Reasons why the issue is happening

We haven’t yet been able to successfully retrieve the image you have specified in your product data. View some common reasons for this below.

Your new image is being processed. Your previous image will continue to appear on Google for up to 30 days. If you recently updated other product details, check that this image still matches.

Note: Pending crawls only cause product disapproval for first-time uploads. For image updates, approved items continue serving the previous image in the background without downtime.

How to fix the issue

Determine which issue applies to your account:

The image crawl rate is too slow

It can take up to 30 days for a product image to be crawled and retrieved. You can potentially increase the crawl rate in Google Search Console or move your images to a faster server. It’s also possible that the images you submitted for these products are pending a crawl.

You recently submitted your products to Google

Recently submitted items experience a natural fetching delay. To optimize this, ensure your servers aren't returning 500 errors, adjust your Google Search Console crawl rate, and pace large bulk image updates in batches (for example, 10% daily) for continuous crawling.
- Note: Items may remain approved and continue to serve legacy assets while the background fetch is still processing.

Your product images aren’t live yet, or you recently updated the images

Make sure that the image URLs you submit in your data feed are live in your serving system and available for Google to crawl.
A new image can take up to 6 weeks to appear in your ad or listing if the image URL remains unchanged.
To allow the systems to identify the change and crawl the new image quickly (typically within 3 days, but can take up to 30 days), use a new image URL and update it in your product data whenever you change an image.

Your product images have HTTP headers

If the header information for an image is different from the expected, the image processor will not be able to cache a copy of your image. Typically, headers are only an issue for images that are dynamically generated.
Two header fields that must be passed are content-type and content-length:
- Content-type describes the file type you're sending. Two common values for images are image/gif and image/jpeg.
- Content-length gives information about the file size for an image.
If you choose to add header fields, make sure they're appropriate for the image. Don't select "cache-control".

A robots.txt file on your server is blocking access

A robots.txt file on your server prevents Google from crawling the images on your site. For the server to access these images, modify your robots.txt file to allow both user-agents "Googlebot" and "Googlebot-Image" to crawl your site. Learn more about the robots.txt.
Enable Google to crawl your site by adding the following lines to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Googlebot Disallow:

User-agent: Googlebot-Image Disallow:

Fix your products in Merchant Center

If your issue requires changes to a product (or multiple products), follow the instructions below:

Fix products one by one directly in Merchant Center

Go to Products under “Products & store” and then select the Needs attention tab.
Use the filter icon above the table to find all products affected by your issue.
Select the title of the product you want to fix, then select Edit product.
Determine which issue applies to your account, and then make the necessary changes.
Select Save.

Fix multiple products at once

Go to Products under “Products & store” and then select the Needs attention tab.
Use the filter icon above the table to find all products affected by your issue.
Select the Download icon to download a list (.csv) of all affected products for all issues or this particular issue.
Cross reference the downloaded list with your uploaded product data, determine which issue(s) apply to your account, and then make the necessary changes.
Reupload your corrected product data to Merchant Center using your chosen upload method.

Next steps

After making the requested changes, check that you’ve fixed the issue by making sure the issue is no longer listed on the “Needs attention” page.

Keep in mind: While we typically recrawl new images within 3 days (72 hours), the image may remain in a pending state during processing. As a result, it can take up to 30 days for the issue to be fully resolved and disappear from the “Needs attention” page.

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