You’ve successfully added your photos to a listing, pressed “Publish”, and everything looked fine…. until it didn’t.
Suddenly your gallery image becomes a grey box, your description photos fail to load, or your thumbnail looks strangely corrupted on some devices but not others.
If your images uploaded correctly and your links were fully accepted by eBay, yet they don’t display after publishing, this guide explains the real technical reasons why this happens,… and how sellers can prevent it.
Inside this article
1. Broken Image Icons After Publishing
Sometimes, eBay displays a generic broken-image placeholder even though the file was valid at the moment of upload.
This usually happens due to:
▶️ Temporary CDN fallback
eBay distributes your images across multiple content delivery network (CDN) layers. Right after publishing, some nodes may not have fully cached your new image yet. The result: a “broken” icon on certain connections or regions.
▶️ Browser connection timeout
If a shopper’s browser cannot fetch the image within a very short window (due to routing issues or slow response from the image host), eBay replaces it with a broken icon to avoid delaying page load.
▶️ CORS-related fetch failures
Even though the image was accepted, the browser can still block rendering if the response headers from your host are missing or inconsistent (eg. missing Content-Type, mismatched ETag, or accidental no-cache rules).
How to fix it
- Host images on a platform optimized for marketplace hotlinking (fast CDN, global cache, correct headers).
- Make sure your server consistently returns 200 OK, correct
Content-Type, and no forced redirects. - Avoid hosting images on personal websites or dynamic platforms that occasionally throttle or timeout.
2. Missing Gallery Photos (Main Image Not Loaded)
A listing may publish correctly but the main gallery photo fails to appear for some users.
Common causes include:
▶️ Slow first-byte response
If an image takes too long to respond on first load, eBay’s gallery component may skip it and fall back to the next available photo or show nothing.
▶️ Intermittent serving issues
Some hosting providers route image traffic through multiple internal layers. If one of those nodes returns an inconsistent response (200 → 500 → 200), eBay’s gallery may fail to lock onto the image.
▶️ CDN cache fragmentation
If your CDN doesn’t replicate content consistently worldwide, eBay users in some countries may see the image while others see an empty gallery slot.
How to fix it
- Use an image CDN with extremely low TTFB and aggressive global caching.
- Ensure your image host doesn’t introduce variability (eg. dynamic compression toggles, randomized cookies, short-lived URLs).
- Test your main gallery photo across multiple regions and devices.
3. Corrupted or Blurry Thumbnails
Sometimes the full-size image loads fine, but the thumbnail looks corrupted, overly pixelated, or shows strange color artifacts.
This usually indicates:
▶️ eBay’s resizing algorithm encountering an inconsistent JPEG
If the JPEG’s metadata is unusual (progressive encoding, missing ICC profile, non-standard restart intervals), eBay’s thumbnail generator may mis-render it.
▶️ Double-compression issues
If your host already applies aggressive compression, eBay may re-compress the already degraded image when generating thumbnails… resulting in visible distortions.
▶️ Unexpected EXIF payload
Some thumbnailing processes choke on images with:
- non-rotated EXIF orientation flags
- unused alpha channels
- embedded previews or multiple JPEG frames
How to fix it
- Use standard, single-frame, non-progressive JPEGs.
- Prefer 4:4:4 or 4:2:0 chroma subsampling over exotic encodings.
- Strip unnecessary EXIF data, but keep the basic orientation tag.
Platforms like Img.vision automatically normalize your JPEGs before eBay processes them, reducing corruption risks.
4. Cross-Browser Inconsistencies (Chrome vs Safari vs Firefox)
Your images may look perfect in Chrome but broken or missing in Safari… or vice-versa.
Typical reasons:
▶️ Different caching rules per browser
Browsers vary in how aggressively they purge, reuse, or bypass CDN caches.
If your image host returns inconsistent caching headers, some browsers may discard the image or refuse to load a stale version.
▶️ Progressive JPEG handling
Safari historically had issues decoding certain types of progressive JPEGs.
Firefox can display partially corrupted progressive scans.
Chrome may reject images with invalid restart markers.
▶️ HEIC/JXL auto-conversion by your image host
Some platforms automatically deliver modern formats (HEIC, JPEG XL, WebP) when the browser supports it, but not all eBay modules support them consistently.
How to fix it
- Ensure your CDN sends a stable, explicit
Content-Type: image/jpeg. - Avoid automatic WebP/AVIF switching unless it’s fully compatible.
- Test images in all three major engines (Blink, WebKit, Gecko).
5. JPEG Rendering Issues That Cause Photos to “Disappear“
Even if eBay fully accepts your image, the JPEG decoding can fail silently in the browser. That results in:
- blank white areas
- half-loaded images
- infinite spinner icons
- “missing” photos in the item description
JPEGs typically fail due to:
▶️ Problematic progressive scans
Multi-scan JPEGs with non-standard segment markers can decode fine on desktop Chrome but fail on older iOS Safari.
▶️ Invalid Huffman tables
Some camera apps or AI background-removal tools output JPEGs with broken or non-standard Huffman segments. eBay accepts the file, but the browser chokes on decoding.
▶️ Corrupt EOI marker
If the “end of image” marker is missing or truncated, some browsers display the image partially while others hide it completely.
How to fix it
- Re-export images through a stable encoder (Photoshop, ImageMagick, Img.vision).
- Avoid overly aggressive optimization tools with experimental modes.
- Always serve a clean, baseline JPEG for eBay.
6. How to Ensure Your eBay Images Display Reliably Every Time
To guarantee your photos always show correctly after publishing, focus on these fundamentals:
✔️ Host on a stable CDN designed for marketplace hotlinking
A reliable host eliminates CDN gaps, header inconsistencies, and slow TTFB spikes.
✔️ Serve clean, baseline JPEGs
Stick to predictable JPEG structures. No exotic formats, no experimental compression modes.
✔️ Maintain consistent headers
Always return:
200 OKContent-Type: image/jpeg- A stable
Cache-Controlpolicy - Redirect-free URLs
✔️ Avoid dynamic image generation
Always serve static, cached files to keep load times predictable.
✔️ Test your listing immediately after publishing
View the listing in:
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Safari
- Mobile Safari (real device)
- incognito/private mode
If all versions display reliably, the listing is stable.
Final Takeaway
When images don’t show after an eBay listing is published, even though they uploaded fine, the cause is almost always rendering, caching, CDN, or JPEG decoding behavior, not an upload or acceptance problem.
By using a stable image host and serving clean, consistent JPEGs, you eliminate 95% of the reasons photos disappear, break, or look corrupted on eBay.
