This article will help address two common issues related to images and their processing by Google Merchant Center.
Wrong Transparency to Color Conversion in Google Shopping
The very first issue we would like to focus on is how Google treats transparency in some cases.
From account to account, you might notice black background images appearing in places where store imagery relies on a transparent background.
We are unsure why that happens since it might not always affect all items. For example, our image editor can correctly handle affected items as a solution proxy. We can only assume that some signal in the image's binary code confuses the Google system into applying a black background.
How to fix:
- Make sure to use solid background-color images. For example, you could convert the background to white or another color that works well with your website graphic.
- Use image editing tools that can reapply the background using solid colors, like our Image Editor, allowing you to handle the conversion of the transparency directly on our side and providing Google with solid background images instead.
Unsupported Image Type
This issue can occur if your image format, its metadata, or image-hosting server headers are not aligned or are sending confusing or corrupted data.
To begin with, ensure your images are in one of the supported image formats per Google's requirements.
JPEG, PNG, WebP, BMP, TIFF, or GIF.
If it is and you still get that error, you could try fixing it using one of the two following methods:
How to fix:
- Assuming it's not a Google bug, you likely have some data corruption in your image’s source, and you might be wondering why Google Merchant Center can’t see your image correctly if your browser does. This is because browsers can ignore some of these types of issues, which is why it can be displayed in your browser. However, Google bots can’t parse it, or it’s simply a bug on Google's end affecting only specific images under specific circumstances.
If you would like to fix it on your end instead of using the method below, we recommend regenerating the image or even converting it to a different format to try and fix whatever Google bots deem broken. Also, make sure your server response headers don't have issues, e.g., suggesting the wrong image size. - This is by far the easiest and most scalable option: use our Image Editor, which can deal with most image corruption issues and response header issues. It serves as a proxy between your image and Google bots and fixing it in the middle.
We hope this article helps solve the issues, and if you have any questions, please get in touch with us via our contact form.