Upscaling
Upscaling means enlarging an image to more pixels than it was made with, which makes it bigger without adding any real detail.
- Upsampling
- Image enlargement
What it means
Software can turn a 160 by 160 thumbnail into a 1500 by 1500 file in seconds. To fill the new pixels, it estimates what lies between the old ones, so edges soften and small print blurs. The file gets bigger, but the picture holds no more of the product than before.
Google advises against it in so many words, and its page on lifestyle images gives the reason in the next breath: “Don’t scale up an image or submit a thumbnail. Scaled-up images appear blurry and lower performance.”1
Alongside its new 500 by 500 minimum, Google says it will optimise some smaller images itself. It says these “will meet the new image requirements and will prevent product disapproval without any action from you”.2 That is a safety net for the listing, not a better picture. Whatever the optimisation does, it starts from the pixels you sent.
Think of it like this
Photocopying a postage stamp onto a sheet of A4 gives the same result. The copy is bigger, but it shows nothing the stamp did not, only blurrier.
For example
A supplier’s only picture of a fridge water filter is 300 by 300 pixels. Upscaled to 600 by 600, it clears Google’s 500 by 500 rule, yet shows a shopper nothing more. The manufacturer’s 2000 by 2000 original, found from the zoom view on its product page, shows the part number on the cap.
Why it matters
An upscaled image passes a size check and still shows the shopper less than the product deserves. The better fix is the original behind the small picture, which is often on the manufacturer’s or the supplier’s own product page.
Not to be confused with
Sources
- Google Merchant Center Help. Lifestyle image link [lifestyle_image_link].
- Google Merchant Center Help. Merchant Center product data specification update 2026.
- Shopify Help Center. Product media types.