Google Images and Lens can find a webshop product from a photo when that photo is a proper <img> element with a descriptive filename and accurate alt text, sitting on a product page whose copy and structured data describe the same product. A Merchant Center feed and an image sitemap support this, but they don't replace it. Before Christmas you don't need new tricks; you need these basics in place on every product page before the traffic arrives.
Why bother now? In March 2026, Dan Taylor, Google's VP of global advertising, told a press briefing that Google Lens handles more than 25 billion visual searches a month, with roughly a fifth of them showing commercial intent. That's a global figure, not a local one, but the direction is clear: more and more people snap a coat, a lamp or a toy and search from there. Gift season is where this shows most: the shopper knows exactly what they want, just not what it's called.
- Google doesn't index CSS background images. Product photos should be plain
<img>elements, inside<picture>if you like. - Filenames are only a faint signal; alt text is the most important image metadata. Describe what's in the photo, without keyword stuffing.
- Use the structured data
imageproperty to signal the main product image, and send the same image in your Merchant Center feed. - An image sitemap really matters when your gallery loads images with JavaScript.
- Serve the same image from the same URL everywhere, and don't mass-rename image files in November.
How does Google "see" your product images?
It doesn't just look at pixels. According to Google's image SEO documentation, it uses alt text together with computer vision and the content of the page to understand what an image shows. So Lens and Google Images don't work in a vacuum: the product page matters as much as the photo. Google doesn't publish how Lens ranks results, so we don't promise positions there. What we can do is make every signal point the same way.
The same documentation flags a common technical trap: Google doesn't index images loaded via CSS. If your theme renders the product photo as a background-image (plenty of flashy galleries and sliders do), that image effectively doesn't exist for search. It's easy to check: open a product page's source and see whether the main photo sits in a real <img src="…"> element.
Which formats?
WebP and AVIF are fine; per Search Engine Journal's write-up, Google Search has supported AVIF since 2024. JPEG XL, however, isn't supported in Google Images or Discover previews. If you want to use it anyway, offer it as a <picture> source and keep JPEG, WebP or AVIF in the <img> src.
What should go in the filename and the alt text?
Filename
In Google's own words, the filename gives only very light clues about an image's subject. The documentation recommends short, descriptive names over generic ones like IMG00023.JPG or image1.jpg, and suggests automating naming if you have thousands of images. That's exactly what we do: the shop generates the name from product data on upload, lowercase, hyphenated, no accents, e.g. wool-beanie-mustard-front.webp. If your store is multilingual, the docs also recommend translating filenames.
Alt text
Google calls alt text the most important image metadata, and it's an accessibility feature too: screen reader users rely on it to know what's in the picture. The documentation explicitly warns against keyword stuffing, since it hurts the user experience and can look like spam. Our rule is simple: write it the way you'd describe the photo over the phone to someone who can't see it.
| Element | Weak | Good |
|---|---|---|
| Filename | DSC_4471.jpg | wool-beanie-mustard-front.webp |
| Alt | beanie beanie cheap beanie christmas gift | Mustard yellow knitted wool beanie with pompom, front view |
| Variant photo alt | Identical for every colour | One per colour: "…navy…", "…burgundy…" |
One detail many shops miss: the documentation says Google also draws on surrounding text and captions, so images should sit near relevant text. Product pages handle this naturally, but category pages are often just a photo and a price. A short, unique line of description helps there too.
What do structured data and Merchant Center add?
Structured data
Google's documentation says the choice of preview image for a page is fully automated and draws on several sources. You can indicate your preferred image with the structured data image property or the og:image meta tag. On a product page that's the image field of the Product type, and our rule is that it lists exactly the same URLs as the page itself:
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "Product",
"name": "Knitted wool beanie, mustard",
"image": [
"https://example.com/images/wool-beanie-mustard-front.webp",
"https://example.com/images/wool-beanie-mustard-on-model.webp"
]
}
</script>We cover the full product schema (price, stock, shipping) and what not to mark up in a separate post: Structured data in 2026.
Merchant Center
Your Merchant Center feed is the other route your product data takes to Google. Google doesn't spell out how much Lens shopping results lean on the feed versus the crawled page, so for webshops we keep both in order. What matters is consistency: the feed's main image should be the same clean product shot used on the page and in structured data, and the name, price and availability shouldn't disagree either. The exact image requirements live in the official product data specification; read it before you upload.
Does a webshop need an image sitemap?
Google's image sitemap documentation describes it as a way to tell Google about images it might not otherwise find, for example ones loaded with JavaScript. It can be a separate file, or you can add image tags to your existing sitemap; Google treats both the same. Each <url> can hold up to 1,000 images, and if images are served from a CDN on another domain, both domains need to be verified in Search Console.
<url>
<loc>https://example.com/product/wool-beanie-mustard/</loc>
<image:image>
<image:loc>https://example.com/images/wool-beanie-mustard-front.webp</image:loc>
</image:image>
</url>If your platform or a plugin still emits image:title and image:caption, note that Google dropped these from its documentation in 2022; they do nothing. Our take: if product images are plain <img> elements in server-rendered HTML, an image sitemap is a safety net. If your gallery is built in JavaScript, don't skip it.
What to do before Christmas, and what not to?
Late October still leaves time to fix things; in November, stability matters more. Our pre-season check looks like this:
- Source check: main product images are
<img>elements, not CSS backgrounds. - One image, one URL: Google's updated guidance is to serve the same image from the same URL everywhere so it only needs crawling once. Category page, product page and feed shouldn't point to three different resized copies unless they must.
- Alt text on best-sellers first: you don't need all three thousand at once; start with what sold last December.
- Structured data vs. feed: do the image, price and availability match?
- Speed: the documentation notes that images are often the biggest part of a page's weight. We go deeper on LCP and image loading in our Core Web Vitals post.
And what not to do: don't mass-rename image files in November. Every new filename is a new URL Google has to rediscover, and the busiest weeks are the worst time for proven images to drop out of the index. If you must rename, do it now and redirect the old image URLs to the new ones.
For each product we publish at least one clean shot on a neutral background plus one or two in-use photos. The former goes into the feed and structured data; the latter help the shopper decide it's really what they want. You can track results in Search Console's Performance report by switching the search type to Image.
Frequently asked questions
Can image filenames contain accented characters?
They can; Google's documentation points to URL encoding guidelines for non-Latin and special characters. We still use accent-free, hyphenated names so the CDN, the feed and shared links don't end up with oddly encoded filenames.
Do I need Merchant Center for my product images to show up in Google Images?
Not for image indexing; Google handles that by crawling your pages. For webshops we still keep the feed in order, because Google's shopping surfaces rely on it too, and consistency between the two only helps.
Can an AI tool write my alt text?
As a first draft, yes, but review it. AI tends to produce generic or keyword-stuffed descriptions, and it can't tell whether the photo shows the mustard or the ochre variant. Always take colour, material and view from your product data.
How long until fixes show up?
No one can guarantee that; it depends on how quickly Google recrawls your pages and images. That's why we recommend not leaving seasonal product pages until early December.
If you're not sure Google can even see your shop's images, request our free SEO and AI visibility audit. And if you're planning a new store, we build image handling in from the start as part of our webshop development work.