If your online store advertises products on Google, there is a date worth writing down: January 31, 2027. From then on Google will require every product image to be at least 500 by 500 pixels. A product with a smaller image won’t pass: it will be disapproved and will stop appearing on Google.
It sounds minor, but the problem is quieter than it seems. Old photos passed the check for years and nobody looked at their size. So below: what exactly changes, who is affected, where in Merchant Center (the account where a store sends its products to Google) to check it, and what to do while there is time. We checked the facts against Google’s Merchant Center help on October 7, 2026; the link is in the text. Section names are taken from the English help page.
What changes
Google’s help page on image requirements says that new image size requirements of at least 500 x 500 pixels apply to all products beginning January 31, 2027. If an image doesn’t meet the requirements, it won’t appear on Google surfaces, and you’ll see a notification in the Diagnostics section of your Merchant Center account.
For comparison: the minimum used to be much lower, 100 × 100 for most products and 250 × 250 for apparel. These numbers are no longer on Google’s current help page; they are given by industry publications about feeds and Google Shopping. This is exactly why old photos passed for years.
Separately, Google recommends images of 1500 × 1500 pixels or more, so that a product looks best in all display formats. So 500 by 500 is the floor, not the goal.
Who is affected
Everyone who sends products to Google Merchant Center and advertises them in Google Shopping (product ads with a photo and price). The help page speaks of “all products”, with no exceptions by category. If you sell on your own site or on a platform and photos are pulled in automatically, it is still worth checking: the size comes from the file that sits on your site.
What it can cost you
A disapproved product isn’t shown in ads. If a store has a few hundred products with old photos, in February you may find a catalogue where part of the items simply disappeared. Campaigns may keep running, but on a smaller range, and it is easy to miss if you only look at overall numbers.
Industry publications write that Merchant Center began showing warnings about small images as early as summer 2026. This isn’t from Google’s help page, so we suggest simply checking whether you have such warnings rather than taking our word for it. No warnings is not a guarantee that everything is fine, but it is a good sign.
How to find out a photo’s size
The simplest way is to open a product photo on your site in a separate tab: in many browsers the size in pixels shows in the tab title, and the right-click menu has an item with properties or image information. You can also ask a developer or whoever runs the catalogue to export a list of products with image sizes. For a small store it’s an hour’s job; for a store with thousands of products you need a file.
Note that Google looks at the main image you send in the feed (the file from which Merchant Center takes product data). If the image on the page is large but the feed holds a shrunken thumbnail, the problem is in the feed. So it’s worth comparing the photos on the site and in Merchant Center.
Not only size: what else gets a photo rejected
Making the photo bigger is not enough: it also has to follow the rules. According to Google’s Merchant Center help (checked on 7 October 2026), product photos must not contain watermarks, logos or brand names (unless they are part of the product itself), promotional text such as “Buy now”, prices, barcodes or borders. The recommendation: the product fills 75–90% of the frame, the background is white or transparent, and there is a single product in the photo.
The logo trap. A shop swaps a small photo for a bigger one, but its logo or a “-20%” badge stays in the corner. That photo will be rejected just the same. Practitioners describe cases where products passed the check at launch and were rejected en masse a week later. According to practitioners, the rules apply to the photo you send to Google, so the logo can stay on your website while a clean version goes to Google. That is a question for whoever runs your feed.
What practitioners say, and what the help says. Some practitioners recommend putting a logo on the photo “for trust”. Google’s help prohibits such overlays. The same goes for backgrounds: some practitioners test a bright, contrasting background without text and say it passes the check and stands out among white photos. The help, however, requires a white or transparent background. Our advice: make the main photo by the help, and try a coloured background only as a separate test.
Google can’t open the file. The help says Google’s crawlers (Googlebot and Googlebot-image) must be able to access your product images, and a robots.txt file (rules for search crawlers) can block them. Practitioners describe a case where an error about an unsupported image type actually meant images blocked for Google. If your photos are big and the rejection stays, ask your developer exactly that.
Updates are not instant. According to industry media and practitioners (not Google’s help), if you replace a file at the same address, Google may not notice the change for up to six weeks. Counting from 31 January, that is the end of December. So give the new photo a new file name, and don’t wait for January.
What to do yourself in 15 minutes
- Open Merchant Center and the “Diagnostics” section. See whether there are messages about image size.
- Open several of your products on the site, especially old ones, and check the main photo’s size. If an image looks blurry at full screen, it is most likely small.
- Make a list of products with small photos. Start with the ones that bring the most sales, because losing them hurts most.
- Replace the photos with larger ones. Aim not for the minimum but for the recommended size of 1500 × 1500 or more.
- Check “Diagnostics” again in a few days: Merchant Center doesn’t update instantly.
Enlarging a small picture with software won’t always help: the size in pixels grows, the sharpness doesn’t. Better to take the original from your supplier or shoot a new photo. This is our practical advice, not a Google rule.
What to ask your contractor
- Are there warnings in Merchant Center about image size, and how many products do they affect?
- How many products have a main photo smaller than 500 × 500?
- Who will replace these photos, and by when?
- Is there a plan in case we don’t manage to replace some of them by January 31?
If the answer is “we don’t know”, open Merchant Center yourself and look at “Diagnostics”. It takes a few minutes and needs no knowledge of advertising.
Summary
Three things to remember. The date: January 31, 2027. The minimum: 500 by 500 pixels, 1500 by 1500 recommended. The consequence: the product is disapproved and not shown. There is enough time to replace photos without rushing, but not so much that you can put it off until January.
You can read how we work with product advertising in the Merchant Center and Shopping sections. For other things Google does in your account without your say-so, see our article what Google Ads turns on by itself.
Want a free audit of your Google Ads account? Send us a request — we will look at your account and Merchant Center and tell you what is worth fixing before January.