Contact details in images: what Merchant Center expects
Put your contact details, the business name, address, phone and email, on the page as real text, not only inside an image nobody can copy or tap. Google asks for contact information customers can act on, the same on your site as in Merchant Center, and a picture of an address does neither job well.
Why this matters
Google’s contact fix page opens with the minimum: “Show at least a business address, phone number, email, contact form, or social media business profile on your online store.” It then asks you to make sure your “business name, address, and phone number are identical in your website footer, contact page, and Merchant Center settings.”
A picture of an address is on the page and still not much use. The “Editorial and professional requirements” count it as a problem when “Contact information, shipping information, or a frequently asked questions section on the website is incomplete or unclear for customers to take action on.” A phone number inside an image cannot be tapped to call, an email inside an image cannot be clicked, and neither can be copied, translated or read out by a screen reader. On a phone the whole graphic shrinks until the postcode is a guess.
It also makes the match with Merchant Center harder to show. The details under Business info in Merchant Center are text; if the only copy on your site is a JPEG, anyone comparing the two has to read a picture. The Misrepresentation policy is clear that a store must not “Present a false identity, business name, or contact information”, so the aim is details that are true, identical and easy to check. Product Experts on Google’s Merchant Center Community go further and ask for the business name, phone number, email, street address and opening hours in every page footer and on the contact page.
The free scan reads the text of your rendered footer for a street address or postcode and flags a footer where it finds none. An address that exists only in a picture is not text, so it is worth fixing before you scan. The contact and identity checks are listed on the misrepresentation checker; for where the details should appear, see public business address and customer contact.
Typical evidence
What you see vs what a page parser can extract
Public scans extract text from the DOM. A beautiful contact graphic can look clear to a human but still contain no selectable contact text.
The public signals this check looks for:
The footer shows the address and phone number as part of a designed banner image
The footer shows the address and phone number as part of a designed banner image.
The contact page is a single graphic with the business details laid out in it
The contact page is a single graphic with the business details laid out in it.
The email address is written into an image to dodge spam, with no mailto link or contact f…
The email address is written into an image to dodge spam, with no mailto link or contact form anywhere.
The phone number in the header is an image, so it cannot be tapped to call on a phone
The phone number in the header is an image, so it cannot be tapped to call on a phone.
The registered company name and number appear only inside a footer badge or logo
The registered company name and number appear only inside a footer badge or logo.
What it looks like once it is right
The footer keeps the logo image and, under it, the same details as text: the name, the address in an address element, the phone as a tel: link and the email as a mailto: link, all matching Business info in Merchant Center.
Common mistakes
Common mistake
Fix checklist
Characters, not pixels
HTML text is selectable and easier for assistive technology and public tools to use than words baked into an image. Test the rendered page directly; a scan cannot prove how every external system extracts it.
Questions merchants ask
Is it OK to show my address and phone number as an image?
Keep the image if you like, but add the same details as text. Google’s contact fix page asks for at least one contact method on your store, and the Editorial and professional requirements count contact information that is unclear for customers to take action on as a problem. Text can be copied, tapped and read aloud; an image cannot.
Does the contact information on my site need to match Merchant Center?
Google’s contact fix page asks for your business name, address and phone number to be identical in your website footer, contact page and Merchant Center settings. Put them on the site as text so the match is easy to see, and update both places together when anything changes.
Should I put my email in an image to stop spam?
A contact form or a plain mailto link is kinder to shoppers than a picture. Google’s contact fix page lists a contact form and a social media business profile among the contact routes it accepts, so you do not need to publish the address as an image at all. See text in images for the other store details that get stuck in graphics.
Remediation
Risk signal
Similar cases
Sources
Community guidance
Written by Product Experts, the users Google recognises for their answers on its Merchant Center Community forum. Often stricter than Google’s help pages, and not Google policy.
Last reviewed 23 Sep 2026.
That is one issue. The library documents 134.
The free scan lists what it finds on your store. The paid report adds the affected pages, captured evidence and step-by-step fixes. Start free, with no account needed.