How-toUpdated 2026-07-06

Text on image

What causes the "Text on image" error in Merchant Center and how to fix it.

Plain-English summary

This error means your primary product image has promotional text, a watermark, or an overlaid graphic on it, which breaches Google's image policy. Fix it by using a clean image with nothing overlaid, and moving any promotional text to ad copy or an additional image instead.

What triggers it

"Text on image" fires when Google's editorial check finds anything added on top of the product in the primary image: promotional text like "50% off," a sale flash, a price stamp, a watermark, a border, or a logo. Google treats the primary image as a product photo, not an advert, so any overlay breaches policy regardless of how small it is.

This is one of five causes covered in full in image policy and image disapprovals.

/tools's enrichment flags primary images carrying overlays before submission, so promotional treatments get caught and moved to the right place rather than triggering a disapproval.

Step by step

  1. Identify what's overlaid on the primary image. Common culprits: sale badges, price stamps, watermarks, borders, or a logo burned into a corner of the photo.
  2. Replace the primary image with a clean, product-only shot. The primary image_link should show just the product with nothing added on top.
  3. Move any promotional treatment elsewhere. Sale messaging belongs in ad copy or landing-page design, not the primary image. Lifestyle or annotated versions can go in additional_image_link, where the rules are looser.
  4. Re-submit and confirm the overlay flag clears. Once the clean image is live, this clears on the next crawl without needing a manual re-review request.
  • Image policy and image disapprovalsThe image rules that get products disapproved in Merchant Center, promotional overlays, placeholders, low resolution, crawler blocks and generic shared images, and how to fix each.
  • Image too genericWhat causes the "Image too generic" error in Merchant Center and how to fix it.
  • Image requirements from ShopifyHow Shopify product and variant images map to Google's image_link and additional_image_link, resolution rules, variant image handling, and the overlays and crawl blocks that get images disapproved.
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