Low image quality
What causes the "Low image quality" error in Merchant Center and how to fix it.
This error means your image is blurry, pixelated, or heavily compressed, even if it technically meets Google's size minimums. Fix it by replacing it with a genuine high-quality product photo, not a thumbnail or over-compressed file.
What triggers it
"Low image quality" is a distinct check from image too small: an image can meet the minimum pixel dimensions and still fail this check if it's blurry, pixelated, or visibly over-compressed. It's a quality judgement, not just a size measurement.
The common cause is an image pipeline that resizes or re-compresses product photos for page-load speed on the storefront, then feeds that same lightweight version into the product feed instead of a properly exported original.
/tools flags images that look degraded even when they pass size thresholds, catching quality problems that a pure dimension check would miss.
Step by step
- Look at the image at full size, not as a thumbnail. Compression artefacts, blur, and pixelation are often invisible in a small preview but obvious once the image is viewed at its real dimensions.
- Check the source file and export settings. A heavily compressed JPEG export, or an image scaled up from something smaller, will look soft or blocky even if the pixel dimensions pass the minimum.
- Replace it with a genuine high-resolution product photo. Use the original photography, exported at reasonable quality, rather than a resized thumbnail pulled from elsewhere on the site.
- Re-submit and confirm the image reads cleanly. Once a properly exported image is live at image_link, this clears on the next crawl.