I’ve noticed that every time I try to upload an image alt text containing specific keywords, such as “blood”, “die”, and other similar words, the Shopify API returns a 422 error. However, when I remove these words from the alt text, the upload works without any issues.
I rely heavily on accurate image alt descriptions, and since my store sells video game-related products, these words can sometimes be necessary for proper descriptions.
Shopify, could you please provide a list of restricted or banned keywords? This would help store owners like me avoid unnecessary errors and work around these restrictions more efficiently.
Hey @DPM - thanks for reaching out. Definitely understand where you’re coming from here
To my knowledge, we don’t have a specific public list for words that can’t be used in alt text input, but I’m happy to take a look into this.
I’ll touch base with our developers for you, but would you also happen to have an X-Request-ID from any response headers that we’d send out in the error response for an example where you saw the 422 error on hand? I can take a look in our logs to see if we’re surfacing any internal error messages that would point us to the exact cause of the issue on our end.
Thumbnail of a Zip-up Hooded Sweatshirt featuring Guts in his Berserker Armor from Berserk, showcasing his grim and relentless warrior spirit. Encased in the cursed armor that pushes him beyond human limits, Guts takes on a monstrous form, with glowing eyes and a jagged, wolf-like helm. Driven by rage and an unyielding will to survive, he battles against fate itself, no matter the cost to his body and soul. This design captures the dark, brutal essence of Berserk, making it a must-have for fans of Kentaro Miura’s legendary manga.
@Alan_G there must be some kind of blacklist of words, I’ve been testing with multiple alt texts including “heavy” words and it returns me 422, as soon as I remove these words it works. It would be nice to know the banned words so I can modify my listings
Hey @DPM - thanks for trying that and for sharing the full alt text value you were using. I was able to touch base with our developers and they confirmed that there isn’t a “banned” list of words specific to alt text. I was also able to do some testing on my end, and I think I may have figured out what was triggering those 422 errors.
Using the example you shared, I ran a quick test in Postman on my test shop, and this is what I got back:
It looks like the 422 error was caused by the alt text value being over the 512 character limit rather than triggered by a content filter. I removed the last little bit of the last sentence here:
Thumbnail of a Zip-up Hooded Sweatshirt featuring Guts in his Berserker Armor from Berserk, showcasing his grim and relentless warrior spirit. Encased in the cursed armor that pushes him beyond human limits, Guts takes on a monstrous form, with glowing eyes and a jagged, wolf-like helm. Driven by rage and an unyielding will to survive, he battles against fate itself, no matter the cost to his body and soul. This design captures the dark, brutal essence of Berserk.
And this went through without an issue. If you removed a few words from the description for example, my thinking is that this would have potentially reduced the character amount and got it under the limit so that it processed successfully.
Hope this helps solve things - let me know if you see the issue pop up for alt text values under that 512 character limit though still and I’m happy to keep digging into this.
- thanks for reaching out. Definitely understand where you’re coming from here
