Starting yesterday May 9th, 2017 Google Merchant Center started reporting errors with their image crawlers. In some cases we are seeing that 36% of products are disapproved for “Unexpected image processing error.” Another large account has over 150,000 disapprovals for this reason.
We reached out to Google and learned that they are aware of this issue and it is entirely on their end. It’s currently classified as a “P0” (highest priority) issue, and they are working on solving it now.
So if you log onto your Google Merchant Center account and see this error today, don’t be alarmed.
We will be updating this page as we learn more.
UPDATE (5/10/2017 11:10 AM PST)
From Google: Affected items, that is items that have been incorrectly disapproved for “Unexpected image processing error”, should be re-approved by mid-afternoon UK time tomorrow 10th May. Note however that many items will be fixed much sooner than this. No action is needed from Merchants at this time.
UPDATE (5/11/2017 2:10 PM PST)
We are still working on it. This, once implemented, should automatically approve the affected products. We’re expecting this to happen at or before 12:00 GMT, tomorrow.
Brian Roizen is the Cofounder and Chief Architect of Feedonomics, a full-service feed optimization platform that optimizes product data for hundreds of channels. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and eCommerce webinars, and regularly contributes to Search Engine Land and other industry-leading blogs. Brian graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
