If you work in ecommerce, now is a good time to start reviewing your product images. Google has already announced new Merchant Center requirements coming into effect from January 2027, along with updated recommendations that can help improve your product performance across Shopping.
We’re talking specifically about product images in Google Merchant Center feeds. Although Google has announced that, from 31 January 2027, product images will need to be at least 500 x 500 px, until then it’s important to distinguish between minimum requirements and performance recommendations.
Google’s current recommendation is to use images of around 1500 x 1500 px or higher whenever possible, to ensure stronger performance across all listing formats.
This shows that Google is placing increasing importance on visual quality as a key element in user experience, listing performance and the ability to compete in increasingly visual formats.
Until now, many online stores have treated product images mainly as a way to avoid Merchant Center disapprovals. But Google is now reinforcing the idea that higher-quality images can improve the user’s visual experience and support key metrics such as:
- CTR
- Listing engagement
- Perceived product quality
- Performance across Shopping Ads, Free Listings and feed-based campaigns
And it makes sense: a clearer, sharper image that is properly adapted to different formats can improve the user’s visual experience and increase the likelihood of a click.
Why Google recommends 1500 x 1500 px images
Until fairly recently, products appeared mainly in classic Google Shopping results. Today, however, product feeds also power:
- YouTube Shopping
- Google Images
- Google Lens
- Free Listings
- AI-powered shopping experiences
Each of these environments displays images in different sizes and formats. As a result, an image that technically “meets” the 500 x 500 px requirement may still look limited, blurry or less appealing in more visual interfaces.
Important: simply upscaling small images is not enough. Enlarging a low-quality image to 1500 x 1500 px will not solve issues such as pixelation or lack of sharpness.
If you don’t have internal resources to renew your creatives, Google also offers tools such as Product Studio in Merchant Center, which can help increase resolution, remove backgrounds, generate scenes or create new AI-powered visual assets. Even so, the principle remains the same: the better the original image, the easier it is to achieve a professional result.
More recommendations for images in Merchant Center
Beyond pixel specifications, Google also recommends:
- Maximum image size: 64 megapixels and 16 MB.
- Supported formats: JPEG, WebP, PNG, non-animated GIF, BMP and TIFF.
- Image URLs accessible via HTTP or HTTPS.
- Image URLs under 2,000 characters.
- The product should take up between 75% and 90% of the image frame.
- A white or neutral background for the main image.
- No promotional text, overlays, watermarks, borders, prices or badges.
If you sell products with variants, also make sure each image correctly represents the exact option being advertised. For example, if a product varies by colour, material or pattern, the image should match that specific variant. Using the same image for visually different variants can create a poorer user experience and affect feed quality.
Remember: if you change an image but keep the same URL, Google may take up to six weeks to detect the update. If you also change the image URL, the recrawl usually happens in around three days. So, when updating product images, we recommend updating the file URL as well.
Also, it’s not enough for the URL to be technically correct: Google needs to be able to crawl it. Check that your robots.txt file is not blocking Googlebot or Googlebot-Image, as this can prevent Merchant Center from processing your images correctly.
The potential of additional images to improve your CTR
Google allows you to use one main image, up to ten additional images through additional_image_link, and one lifestyle image through lifestyle_image_link.
At Globerada, we recommend making the most of additional images to show different angles, details, textures and real-life product use.
The lifestyle_image_link attribute can also be a valuable opportunity to stand out from other ecommerce advertisers, as many still don’t use it. Showing the product in a real or aspirational context can help improve CTR and increase traffic without increasing ad spend.
How to improve your images in Merchant Center
If you’ve made it this far and are ready to implement these improvements, we recommend starting with the following steps:
- Review Merchant Center Diagnostics to identify image-related issues.
- Audit the real dimensions and visual quality of your catalogue.
- Detect overlays, promotional text or poor-quality images.
- Check for broken URLs or URLs blocked for Googlebot.
- Evaluate your use of additional and lifestyle images.
- Prioritise products with the highest revenue, investment or competition.
Merchant Center also allows you to enable automatic image improvements to help correct certain issues, such as promotional overlays, watermarks, text or logos covering the product. This can be useful to avoid occasional disapprovals, but it should not replace a manual catalogue review or a strong visual strategy.
More than a technical update, this recommendation confirms a broader shift in Google Shopping: product images are becoming a strategic performance element within Google’s increasingly visual ecosystem.
Email us at info@globerada.com if you have any questions or need help with your feed.
