There are several reasons why catalog images might not appear in Recommendations Desktop. Below are the three most common causes and their corresponding fixes.
Image URLs missing protocol (no https://)
In the catalog, URLs like www.example.com/image.jpg are treated as relative paths when rendered in the Test tab HTML, so the instance domain is prepended (breaking the link).
Only fully qualified URLs (for example https://www.example.com/image.jpg) are interpreted as absolute paths and loaded correctly in the browser preview.
Fix
Ensure the image column in your catalog always stores full HTTPS URLs, not bare domains or protocol‑less links.
Image URLs are not actually present or imported into the catalog
The Test tab can only display images that exist as values in the selected catalog's columns. If that column is empty, contains an invalid URL, or points to an inaccessible image, no thumbnail will appear, even though the rest of the catalog attributes are displayed correctly.
Fix
Find the tested items in your catalog and ensure they have a valid image URL.
Using a catalog property name that doesn't expose the image field to the Test tab
The Test tab looks for specific image properties in the catalog it reads; specifically, it checks whether the property contains "image" or "picture". If your catalog doesn't expose such a field, the UI can't find anything to display visually. Read more in our Testing recommendation documentation.
Fix
Map the image label to the correct column during catalog import so the Test tab can recognize and display it.