Unable to show image
What causes the "Unable to show image" error in Merchant Center and how to fix it.
This error means Google's crawler couldn't reach your image URL at review time, often a blocked crawler, broken link, or hosting issue. Fix it by confirming the URL is publicly accessible, stable, and doesn't redirect unexpectedly.
What triggers it
"Unable to show image" means Google's crawler couldn't fetch the image at review time, so from Google's side there's no image at all, even though the URL might work perfectly in your own browser. This is the most misdiagnosed image error because the image looks fine to you: the disconnect is almost always in how the image host treats a crawler-shaped request versus a normal browser visit.
Common causes: CDN or WAF rules that block unknown user-agents, hotlink protection checking the Referer header, rate limiting that throttles bulk crawler fetches, or a robots.txt disallow on the image path. See the full crawler-blocks breakdown in image policy and image disapprovals.
/tools validates that image URLs are actually fetchable by a crawler-shaped request, not just reachable in a browser, catching hosting-side blocks before they cost you a disapproval.
Step by step
- Test the image URL outside your browser session. Google's crawler isn't a browser: no cookies, no referrer, a specific user-agent. Test the URL with those constraints in mind, not just by clicking it while logged into your own site.
- Check for crawler-blocking hosting settings. Hotlink protection, user-agent filtering, aggressive rate limiting, or a robots.txt rule can all serve you a working image while blocking Google entirely.
- Confirm the URL doesn't sit behind auth or an unexpected redirect. A cookie wall, login requirement, or a redirect chain the crawler doesn't follow will also cause this.
- Whitelist Google's crawler and re-submit. Remove the blocking rule on the image host, then let the feed re-fetch, this clears automatically once the URL is genuinely reachable.