Hello,
We apologize for the issue you are facing with the images indexed by Google. It sounds like there are a few factors at play here that could be affecting how your images are displayed in search results.
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Featured Images: Google indexes images based on the page they are inserted into, not just the standalone image URL. To ensure that your featured images are indexed, make sure they are set correctly in your WordPress post settings as featured images. You can do this by navigating to your post settings and clicking on the Featured image section to add the appropriate image.
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Image File Names: Using generic names like "Images" can hinder SEO performance. It’s best to use descriptive file names that accurately reflect the content of the image. For example, instead of naming an image "image1.png," you could name it "featured-image-title-of-post.png". This helps search engines understand what the image is about and improves visibility in search results.
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Image Format: While PNG is a good format, using WebP can provide better optimization and quality for web images. Ensure that your image optimization plugin is configured correctly to convert images to WebP format where applicable.
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Image Quality: If the images indexed by Google are of worse quality, it may be due to the size or resolution of the images being uploaded. Make sure that your featured images meet the recommended dimensions for social sharing and search indexing, which is typically around 1200px X 630px for optimal display.
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Responsive Images: Ensure that your images are responsive, meaning they adjust based on the device being used to view them. WordPress handles this automatically since version 4.4, but it’s good to double-check that your theme supports responsive images.
If you continue to experience issues after checking these factors, please reply to this ticket, and a human agent from the Rank Math Support team will assist you further. Thank you for raising this concern!
Sources:
How to Show Images in the Search Results » Rank Math
How to Name Images for SEO » Rank Math
Open Graph/Social Preview Image Is Not Displayed » Rank Math
Hello,
Thank you for contacting us and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.
Please note that there is no way we can control the images shown in search results. Google search algorithms select images that they believe will benefit users.
Here’s a link for more information on this: https://www.infidigit.com/news/can-you-control-the-image-snippets-shown-for-a-google-search-result/
But we have a guideline for your images that you can try to follow and see if that works for you: https://rankmath.com/kb/how-to-show-images-in-search-results/
Hope that helps and please don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any other questions.
Thank you.
I had already read your guide but it is not relevant to my question and does not answer why all the images are small in width. It doesn’t even explain why the name of every image on Google is Images.
https://postimg.cc/gallery/1RWsVX5/d8ac59e5
Hello,
Google has plenty of images from your website indexed and most of them are 1200×630 pixels in size which is the recommended size for featured images.
You can clearly see that and the correct title of the page where they show by searching Google Images using the site operator:
Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any other questions.
It’s like Google indexed the wrong image permalink. Instead of searching in upload, look at the image pages. These images shouldn’t be indexed, but maybe I’m doing something wrong.
https://imgur.com/a/qaQkTcr
Hello,
It seems like you have recently removed the images from the site or changed their URL. Google is showing the cached version of the images and that’s why they are not shown in the actual resolution. You must wait for Google to remove the old images and index the new image URLs.
Please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
No, the problem is the deactivation of the
Redirect Attachments option. I have re-inhabited this feature and I should finally have traffic back on the site.
When I fixed Redirect Attachments in the past, the site was starting to have the first customers. Unfortunately I deactivated the option again and the traffic disappeared completely.
A feedback: put if Redirect Attachments is enabled on SEO Analyzer, because this option will create huge SEO problems. I admit that it is because of this option that I have had problems for 4 years on 2 sites.
I had disabled the option, because by default there is a redirect to the homepage. I would like to receive the 404 code, so as to see the error via Ahrefs Audit and fix it in time.
Hello,
The Redirect Attachments option doesn’t affect the image URLs. It only redirects the attachment page URLs to the parent posts. If the media file isn’t attached to a post, then it will be redirected to the homepage or the custom URL you have selected. However, if keeping it enabled improves your site traffic, you can keep using it but it has nothing to do with the resolution of the images in Google Search.
Please do not hesitate to let us know if you need our assistance with anything else.
The poor image quality was due to the related images. I found out that YARPP inserts images with a lower quality than it should. I will change plugin soon.
But I don’t understand why Google doesn’t take the featured images, but the related images. I had other better images: from categories, popular posts…
Now I’m putting the images in every post, instead of the featured images. I hope to solve the post quality problems this way and get the pages back in the rankings.
Hello,
It seems like you’ve identified the issue with the image quality being related to the YARPP plugin. Regarding Google picking up the related images instead of featured images, it may be due to how Google prioritizes content on the page. Featured images should be more prominently placed to signal their importance to search engines.
By adding the images directly into the post content, you’re on the right track to resolving this. Google will likely re-index these changes over time.
We hope this helps.
Thanks.
Not only that: I think YARPP is poorly made. The images are loaded 300px wide, but Google sees them as the original size (1200x630px). So Google, takes the 300px wide low quality image from YARPP and resizes it to 1200px wide. Result? Terrible image and it is likely that this is one of the causes.
Another problem I think is the robots.txt file. Now I have set the robots.txt to permissive, to start all the fixes, because they never start. Only minor fixes so far. Now, I do not know if the robots.txt problem is for the images that Google incorrectly takes from YARPP and the Redirect Attachments setting.
I think it is a combination of these 3 elements that have created problems for 4 years to 2 of my sites.
Hello,
Your robots.txt is already allowing all paths to be crawled by Googlebot and that should include the images.
The attachment pages have nothing to do with the resolution of the images on the SERP. As long as Google discovers the images you intend to index on the content of a post or page (with a bit of content optimization for that image), the behavior of the attachment pages doesn’t matter.
Last but not least, if YARPP is serving lower-resolution images, switching to a different plugin should improve things.
Let us know how that goes.
Hello,
Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.
If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.
Thank you.
