Additional images
Additional images are the pictures of a product that follow the main one: other angles, close-ups, the box, or the product in use.
- Gallery images
What it means
The rest come after the main image: the back, the side, a close-up of the controls, what comes in the box. Each is another view of the same product, and together they answer questions one photo cannot.
Google Merchant Center takes them in the additional image link attribute. It is optional and takes “up to 10 additional images”. Google says they are “commonly used to show a product from different angles or with product staging elements”.1 OpenAI’s product feed has an optional field for “Additional views of this item”.2
Each store handles them differently. A Shopify CSV takes one row per image, up to 250 images a product, with the handle repeated on each row.3 WooCommerce takes a product’s image links in one cell, separated by commas, and uses the first as the featured image.4
Think of it like this
In a shop you turn a product over in your hands to do the same thing. The front tells you what it is, and the back and sides tell you whether it will do.
For example
A Brackmore kettle’s main image shows it alone on white. Its Google feed row then carries three more links in the additional image link column, separated by commas: https://example.com/kt100-side.jpg,https://example.com/kt100-base.jpg,https://example.com/kt100-kitchen.jpg. They show the side, the power base and the kettle on a worktop.1
Why it matters
Google holds additional images to the main image’s requirements, with some room: they may show the product in use, or only part of it. One below the minimum size does not get the product disapproved, “but your images won’t be shown”.1 A set of small supplier thumbnails therefore adds nothing to the listing.
Not to be confused with
Additional images show the same product. A photo of the same kettle in another colour does not count: it is the main image of that variant, since Google asks for “a unique image that represents the distinguishing details of each variant”.5
Sources
- Google Merchant Center Help. Additional image link [additional_image_link].
- OpenAI Developers, Agentic Commerce. Agentic Commerce product feed specification: Products.
- Shopify Help Center. Using CSV files to import and export products.
- WooCommerce documentation. Product CSV Importer and Exporter.
- Google Merchant Center Help. Image link [image_link].