Thumbnail image issues in Google Search

  • fcracer

    (@fcracer)


    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    I absolutely love this plugin and have had great success with it. Even as a small, independent hobby blog, I’ve had a few pages reach the top 5 results in Google Search. However, after a recent update, thumbnails from all of my posts no longer appear in Google Search results and my rankings/visitors are tanking.

    For example, if you search on Google for “leica m11 review”, this page: [ redundant link removed ] is ranked top-5 however, the thumbnail no longer shows in the search results. I’ve tried to backtrack to see what has changed. There have only been two changes in that time: 1. The SEO Framework had updates and 2. Google algo had updates.

    I ran Google’s validators tests and they show the thumbnails appearing. I’ve also checked Google Image Search and I can see all the images from my posts appearing there, so it doesn’t seem to be a block on my end.

    I’m trying to determine if this is a Google issue or something on my end including SEO Framework. Any advice, guidance or insight is greatly appreciated as I’m pulling my hairs out trying to prevent further loss of rankings.

    • This topic was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by fcracer.
    • This topic was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by Yui.

    The page I need help with: [log in to see the link]

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
  • Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    Hello! Thank you for your positive feedback. I’m sorry to hear you’re encountering an issue, however.

    Have you just upgraded from TSF v4.2 or earlier to v5.0 or later?

    I inspected all the URLs from the search query you mentioned (my notes), and it appears Google now requires an image object to be specified in the WebPage structured data. When structured data is absent on a page, Google can also take the last image of the page.

    Someone else also just made this report, but the forum mods removed their reply (they escalated it via private support). They found that Google outputs the images conditionally after tweaking the search query parameters.

    This leads me to believe Google has a bug. To resolve it, I feel obligated to take the discerning part of our premium “Articles” extension’s structured data markup and bring it to the free plugin.

    I’ll post a snippet in my next reply that will do just that. I hope that will resolve the issue within a week or two, and if it does, I’ll add it to the main plugin in the next update for everyone to enjoy.

    Thread Starter fcracer

    (@fcracer)

    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    Hi Sybre, when I posted the request, I was expecting this would languish for weeks as it often does with many plugins support. I’m in awe at your response! Once this is resolved, I feel compelled to add on some extensions so that you get some compensation for this excellent plugin and support provided. Thanks again! I look forward to my pages ranking high again 🙂

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    Hi again 🙂

    Because I had to create a plugin to get this type of modification working well, I went out of my way and created a new snippet service.

    Here’s the snippet: https://tsf.fyi/snippet/get/schema/tsf-image-graph.
    And here’s a guide on installing a snippet on your website: https://tsf.fyi/snippets/install-guide.

    Here’s the actual snippet file, uncompressed: https://tsf.fyi/snippet/schema/tsf-image-graph.php.
    Since the WordPress.org plugin team does not vet this snippet, please use it at your own risk.

    The snippet plugin appends the ‘image’ and ‘primaryImageOfPage’ fields to the Schema.org/WebPage markup outputted by TSF.

    It also uses fallback images, like the site logo, which I believe isn’t a desirable feature, but I’ll work that out when I merge it into the plugin itself. I’m also testing it on our website to analyze Google’s behavior more closely.

    Thread Starter fcracer

    (@fcracer)

    1 month, 2 weeks ago

    I’ve implemented the snippet. Let’s see if Google starts showing thumbnails again soon. Thanks again.

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    1 month, 1 week ago

    Hi again!

    I tried a couple of your pages, but it appears Google hasn’t processed the changes yet. Could you try forcing a reinspection via Google Search Console?

    At Google Search Console, enter the URL you posted with this topic in the top Inspect URL bar. Then, hit “Request Indexing.”

    The page will then be added to Google’s priority queue. Hopefully, we can see a favorable result within a day.

    Expanding the “Page indexing” tab underneath that button lets you see when Google last crawled the page.

    Thread Starter fcracer

    (@fcracer)

    1 month, 1 week ago

    Google shows that it crawled the page on June 23 which should be after I made the change. I’ve encouraged Google to crawl it again and have flushed the cache too.

    Plugin Author Sybre Waaijer

    (@cybr)

    1 month ago

    Hi again!

    I verified that Google indeed has crawled your page by inspecting their caches, but they still do not show the image.

    Would you like to try our premium Articles extension? If so, please contact me at https://tsf.fyi/contact for a free key.

    Articles will do most the same as the snippet, but add extra markup to designate that the webpage is actually of an Article type. The snippet from earlier and Articles do not conflict, so you can keep the snippet in place if you’d like.

    Once activated, please flush your caches and request Google to recrawl the Leica M11 review page as per my previous reply.

    If this indeed solves the issue, I have little choice but to incorporate its functionality into TSF.

Viewing 7 replies - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)
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