Watermark
A watermark is a name, logo or pattern laid over a photograph, usually to show who owns it or to stop it being reused.
What it means
Photographers and suppliers often stamp their pictures with a faint logo, a web address or a word such as SAMPLE. It marks the picture as theirs, and makes it less useful to anyone who copies it.
Product listings are the wrong place for one. Google’s image rules count “Stock photo watermarks, copyright symbols or graphic stamps” among the overlays a product image must not carry, and added logos or shop names are allowed “only if they are an inherent, physical part of the product itself”. An image that breaks those rules “won’t appear on Google surfaces”.1 Google’s best practices for additional images also list “Images with a watermark” among things not to submit.2
Resizing does not help. A watermark is part of the pixels, so a bigger copy has a bigger watermark. The fix is a clean original from the supplier or the manufacturer.
Think of it like this
School photographers do the same with their sample prints, stamping PROOF across them. You can see the picture well enough to choose it, but it is not the copy you are meant to keep.
For example
A supplier’s photo of a frying pan has HOLLINSBY TRADE in pale grey across the middle. Enlarged, it becomes a bigger picture with a bigger watermark. The manufacturer’s clean original replaces it.
Why it matters
A watermark on the main image is enough for Google to disapprove the product, and shoppers see it on your own store just as clearly. Ask the supplier for clean originals when the file arrives, not after a feed is rejected.
Not to be confused with
A watermark is laid over the photo. A brand name printed on the product itself, like the logo on a kettle’s side, is part of what is being sold, and Google’s rules allow it.
Sources
- Google Merchant Center Help. Image link [image_link].
- Google Merchant Center Help. Additional image link [additional_image_link].