Generic image [image_link]

What Google requires

A photograph of the product being sold

The main image must show the actual product. Logos, no-image-available graphics, coming-soon placeholders and category illustrations all fail the requirement, whatever their technical quality. The rule holds even when the placeholder is professionally designed, which is precisely when merchants are most surprised by the refusal.

What happens if you do not

Disapproval, typically clustered on new products

Placeholders enter feeds systematically: the CMS assigns a default image when none is uploaded yet, and the export dutifully ships it. The result is a stripe of disapprovals across exactly the newest products, the ones whose photos have not caught up. Because the same placeholder URL repeats, the pattern is easy to find once you know to look for it.

How to fix it by hand

Hunt the default image

• Sort the feed by image_link and look for one URL shared by many products: that is almost always the CMS default.
• Upload real photographs for those products, or hold them out of the feed until the photos exist; an advertised product with a placeholder converts poorly even where it slips through.
• Change the export so products without a real image are excluded rather than shipped with the default.

Which of our checks apply

One check applies, read from the scanner's registry

The scan recognises placeholder patterns in image URLs and repeated defaults across the catalogue, and names the products still carrying them.

• image_placeholderat risk

The quicker way

Let the scan find them

One scan lists every product whose image is a placeholder rather than a photograph, grouped by the URL they share. The scan to identify errors is free and shows every finding before you pay anything. You only pay for the fix.

Scan your feed