Google Merchant Crawler

Google Merchant Center: Image Processing Issues and Solution in smoxy

Since Google’s recent updates, issues may occur in the Merchant Center when processing product images.

Merchants may receive error messages stating that images cannot be processed, even though the image URLs are valid.

The reason: Google now requires that the file extension of an image URL (e.g., .jpg) must match the actual Content-Type returned by the server.

In smoxy, the URL path remains unchanged during WebP/AVIF conversion, but the actual image format is switched.

Additionally, Google has announced that the AVIF format is no longer supported.

As a result, Merchant Center may reject images if the file extension and Content-Type do not match.

Solution in smoxy

To ensure that Google crawlers always receive the correct format, you need to create a Conditional Rule in smoxy that disables image conversion for the affected Google crawlers.

Create a new rule

1. Log in to smoxy hub and go to the desired Site

2. Navigate to Conditional Rules and click Add conditional rule

   
3. Use a clear name, for example:

   Disable AVIF/WebP for Google Crawler

4. Add conditions (OR logic):

   • User-Agent contains Storebot-Google

   • User-Agent contains GoogleOther

   • User-Agent contains Googlebot-Image

   
5. Add settings Next, add the two settings Convert to AVIF and Convert to WebP and make sure both toggles are disabled. This overrides the conversion rules in smoxy for these two User-Agents only.

1. Create and activate the rule

Background: What did Google change?

• AVIF support removed: Images in the AVIF format are no longer accepted by Google Merchant Center.

• Stricter validation of file extension and Content-Type: If a URL ends with .jpg, it must return Content-Type: image/jpeg.

  Any mismatch (e.g., .jpg URL → image/webp) will result in image processing errors.

Sources

• Google crawler documentation (including GoogleOther & Storebot-Google):

  developers.google.com – Common Crawlers

• Merchant Center image specification:

  support.google.com – Product data requirements

Note on other CDNs

This is not a smoxy-specific issue, but a general change in Google’s Merchant Center behavior.

If you are using additional CDNs or image optimization services (e.g., Cloudflare, BunnyCDN, Cloudinary, Akamai), you must also disable conversion to WebP or AVIF there.

Otherwise, Google may still receive the wrong format and reject images — even if the correct rule is already configured in smoxy.