Images do not display or incorrect items in Email Recommendations

Ensure the ImageLink URL is accessible:

Verify your image URL

1. Log in to Marketing Cloud.
2. Hover over the toolbar, then click Einstein | Email Recommendations.
3. Click Reporting | Admin Tools.
4. In the 'Item Type' menu, select Product.
5. In the 'Search by' field, select either Product Code or SKU.
6. Input the Product Code or SKU in the search box.
7. When the correct product is returned by the search parameters, click either the Product Code or SKU link.
8. Verify that the 'ImageLink' field has the appropriate URL for the image. 
9. Ensure the image URL has the needed protocol (HTTP/HTTPS).

Take the value from imagelink and paste it within a browser URL field. If the Image URL doesn't load, upload a new version of your catalog file to update the imagelink URL to a correct value.
 

Image URL within recommendations is https://s3.amazonaws.com/igd_rr_prod/default.png

This occurs when there are no items returned in the recommendation, this could be by any of the following:

• Rule Manager to restrictive  - Remove some rules
• Not enough products with Online Availability = Y - Review catalog and ensure availability is correct.
• No system scenarios for logic - Allow system default scenarios like Top Sellers or Top Views.
• Enable waterfall predictions to allow scenarios to be combined.

Image URL within recommendations returns "AccessDenied"

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.
<Error>
<Code>AccessDenied</Code>
<Message>Access Denied</Message>
<RequestId>X78JHFC6Y5BKV52W</RequestId>
<HostId>ZNYcXOtIHpcbVOxsygIsZd973SpHd+mzqtMtc0FECLkMBJqctMN8xmmYVmPpS63okNk40xjHCqY=</HostId>
</Error>

https://pi-templates.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/production/5a849cb7f902a741c9b5610b/EXAMPLE~1.png

This error occurs when Einstein recommendations has not generated an image for the item. This occurs when Rule Manager is used to inject a Product/SKU where Online Availability = N. Images are only created for products where OnlineAvailability = Y and the item is a master product (UUID contains ~1).

To resolve this issue, either modify the Rule Manager to not inject this item, or update OnlineAvailability = Y.
 

Incorrect values on fields, like RegularPrice, or any custom field:

Displays only get refreshed on certain conditions when using batch upload of a catalog, review the help doc When Do Recommendation Images Refresh?

To force a refresh of a Display:

1. Go to Einstein | Email Recommendations | Overview | Display.
2. Select the display in question.
3. Click the gear icon, then click Publish Display.
4. This will re-cache the display, add new products, and apply current values in the catalog. 

Blue question mark within a box:

This occurs when the CDN server (or somewhere upstream) is blocking access to the AWS servers used by Einstein Recommendations.

Verify this by going to a new email display and adding the following HTML (the top image will display, the second image will have a small box with a question mark, and the third image may display):

Test Image: <br>
<img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/nto-products/products370/1000100.jpg"><br>
My image<br>
<img src="https://INSERT_VALUE_FROM_IMAGELINK"><br>
<img src="http://INSERT_VALUE_FROM_IMAGELINK">

Test using HTTP vs HTTPS to identify any issue with SSL Certificate.

Einstein Recommendations performs a GET call (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Methods)  to each imagelink URL at the time of publish of a display or upload of a batch catalog. This can cause a large amount of traffic from AWS based web servers to the CDN which can result in blocking and/or Rate limiting.

The CDN team should review these possible solutions:

1. Allowlist the IP address ranges Einstein Recommendations leverages:
   • AWS US EAST IP address for all stacks except Stack 50
   • AWS EU-WEST-2 IP address for Stack 50
   • https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws-ip-ranges.html
2. Allowlist the following User-Agent:
   • user_agent => “Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:40.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/40.0"
3. Request a custom Value/Pair to be added to the GET header to allowlist:
   • SFMC_RECS_IMAGE : true (this header is only present when a display is generating images and not from a preview of a display) 
4. If the image is rendered in the Email Display (one GET call) but the box with a question mark occurs when published, the CDN isn't blocking all calls but is rate-limiting when a large number of calls occur at a time.
5. Publish an Email Display and review incoming traffic on the CDN server or upstream (Firewall/Load Balancer), and review considerations to allow traffic to proceed.

Email Display is being Unpublished

After publishing an Email Display, the system returns to an Unpublish status. This is caused by the above situation when an attempt to access the CDN, the GET call is timing out causing a performance issue. The system will unpublish any offending Email Display. To resolve this issue ensure the CDN server is not rate-limiting or blocking the GET calls from the AWS platform.

Online availability for master product:

If the master product for items are all set to onlineavailability = N, it will exclude all items within this productcode. Master Product is identified by having uuid of PRODUCTID~1

Image is cached:

When an Email recommendation is displayed, it is cached for 48hrs. This 48 hours starts once the recommendation links render for the first time. Any changes within Rule Manager or Availability will not change the products being displayed. To view updates you would need to leverage a new subscriber (profile).