Invalid link or image URL

What is this issue?

link, image_link or additional_image_link isn't a full web address starting with http:// or https://.

Why Google Merchant Center rejects this

Google has to load the product page and image. A relative or broken URL gets the product disapproved.

Valid values / expected format

1. ✓Full URL starting with https:// or http://
2. ✓Must be publicly accessible (no login required)
3. ✓No spaces in the URL

Fix in StriveFormats

Upload your CSV to StriveFormats to detect this issue across all rows, with clear line-by-line reporting.

Fix in Excel

1. 1In Excel, click the column letter for the link / image_link column.
2. 2Press Ctrl+H, find http:// and replace it with https://, then click Replace All. This upgrades insecure URLs.
3. 3Scan the column for cells that start with // or just a filename like 'shirt.jpg'. Add https:// in front of each.
4. 4Find ' ' (a single space), replace it with a hyphen, then click Replace All. This removes spaces from URLs.
5. 5Click a sample URL and press F5, or paste it into a browser, to confirm the image or page loads correctly.
6. 6Save as Text (Tab delimited) (*.txt).

Fix in Google Sheets

1. 1In Google Sheets, select the link / image_link column.
2. 2Press Ctrl+H, find http:// and replace it with https://, then click Replace All.
3. 3Scan the column for cells starting with // or just a filename. Add https:// in front manually.
4. 4Find ' ' (a single space) and replace it with a hyphen, then click Replace All to clean up spaces in URLs.
5. 5Paste a sample URL into a new browser tab to confirm it loads correctly.
6. 6Go to File > Download > Tab Separated Values (.tsv), then rename the file to end in .txt.

Prevent it next time

1. ✓Always use the full URL starting with https://. Never use relative paths or local file paths.
2. ✓Before importing, paste a sample image URL into a browser to confirm it loads correctly.
3. ✓Host all images on a reliable CDN or cloud storage before adding URLs to your CSV.
4. ✓Avoid URL query parameters unless the platform explicitly supports them.
5. ✓Keep image files under 20 MB and use standard formats: JPG, PNG, or WebP.

How StriveFormats detects this

StriveFormats checks the link / image_link column by verifying that each non-empty value begins with http:// or https:// and does not contain spaces. Values that look like relative paths or local filenames are also flagged.