Towards the end of August, Google Base asked that merchants begin sending higher quality images. This is a great move forward for the user (shopper) experience when they can see higher resolution, larger images instead of tiny thumbnail sized ones. I wanted to take a moment to remind merchants that while images for Google Base may be optional, you should ALWAYS include them. Product images are also a field that is required with other comparison shopping engines, so if you are only on Google Product Search and want to be on Pricegrabber, Shopzilla, or Amazon Product Ads and don’t have images you won’t be able to list. Google is asking that images be at least 300×300 pixels, but we also suggest that you don’t submit images that are insanely large dimensions and file sizes. As for the file size, we recommend common file types such as .jpg or .gif. Formats such as .png or .tiff are larger in file size. The reason you want to keep file size down, is that it consumes your server bandwith when the shopping engines are showing your images. Remember that while on the comparison shopping engines this is the shopper’s first exposure to your website and the products you sell. If you have poor or no images, the shopper is likely to skip your listening and choose a competitor’s product.

If you want more resources about product images check out the following links: