Google Images is a way to visually discover information on the web. Users can quickly explore information with more context around images with new features, such as image captions and prominent badges. Show
By adding more context around images, results can become much more useful, which can lead to higher quality traffic to your site. You can aid in the discovery process by making sure that your images and your site are optimized for Google Images. Follow our guidelines to increase the likelihood that your content will appear in Google Images search results. Opt out of Google Images inline linking If you choose, you can prevent the full-sized image from appearing in the Google Images search results page by opting out of inline linking in Google Images search results. To opt out of inline linking:
Google will still crawl your page and see the image, but will display a thumbnail image generated at crawl time in search results. This opt-out is possible at any time, and does not require re-processing of a website's images. This behavior is not considered image cloaking and will not result in manual actions. You can also prevent the image from appearing in search results entirely. To boost your content's visibility in Google Images, focus on the user by providing a great user experience: make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Here are some tips:
Check your page title and descriptionGoogle Images automatically generates a title link and snippet to best explain each result and how it relates to the user query. This helps users decide whether or not to click on a result. We use a number of different sources for this information, including descriptive information in the title, and meta tags for each page. You can help us improve the quality of the title link and snippet displayed for your pages by following Google's title and snippet guidelines. Add structured dataIf you include structured data, Google Images can display your images as rich results, including a prominent badge, which give users relevant information about your page and can drive better targeted traffic to your site. Google Images supports structured data for the following types: Follow the general structured data guidelines as well as any guidelines specific to your structured data type; otherwise your structured data might be ineligible for rich result display in Google Images. In each of these structured data types, the image attribute is a required field to be eligible for badge and rich result in Google Images. Optimize for speedImages are often the largest contributor to overall page size, which can make pages slow and expensive to load. Make sure to apply the latest image optimization and responsive image techniques to provide a high quality and fast user experience. Analyze your site speed with PageSpeed Insights and visit our Web Fundamentals page to learn about best practices and techniques to improve website performance. Add good quality photosHigh-quality photos appeal to users more than blurry, unclear images. Also, sharp images are more appealing to users in the result thumbnail and increase the likelihood of getting traffic from users. Include descriptive titles, captions, filenames, and text for imagesGoogle extracts information about the subject matter of the image from the content of the page, including captions and image titles. Wherever possible, make sure images are placed near relevant text and on pages that are relevant to the image subject matter. Likewise, the filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image. For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is better than IMG00023.JPG. If you localize your images, make sure you translate the filenames, too. Use descriptive alt textAlt text (text that describes an image) improves accessibility for people who can't see images on web pages, including users who use screen readers or have low-bandwidth connections. Google uses alt text along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page to understand the subject matter of the image. Also, alt text in images is useful as anchor text if you decide to use an image as a link. When choosing alt text, focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and is in context of the content of the page. Avoid filling alt attributes with keywords (keyword stuffing) as it results in a negative user experience and may cause your site to be seen as spam. Also consider the accessibility of your alt text, and add the alt attribute as necessary, per W3 guidelines.
We recommend testing your content by auditing for accessibility and using a slow network connection emulator. Help us discover all your imagesUse semantic markup for imagesGoogle parses the HTML of your pages to index images, but does not index CSS images.
Use an image sitemapYou can provide the URL of images we might not have otherwise discovered by submitting an image sitemap. Image sitemaps can contain URLs from other domains, unlike regular sitemaps, which enforce cross-domain restrictions. This allows you to use CDNs (content delivery networks) to host images. We encourage you to verify the CDN's domain name in Search Console so that we can inform you of any crawl errors that we may find. Supported image formatsGoogle Images supports images in the following formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG. You can also inline images as Data URIs. Data URIs provide a way to include a file, such as an image, inline by setting the src of an img element as a Base64 encoded string using the following format: <img src="data:image/svg+xml;base64,[data]">While inlining images can reduce HTTP requests, carefully judge when to use them since it can considerably increase the size of the page. For more on this, refer to the section on pros and cons of inlining images on our Web Fundamentals page. Responsive imagesDesigning responsive web pages leads to better user experience, since users use them across a plethora of device types. Refer to our Web Fundamentals on Images to learn about the best practices for handling images on your website. Webpages use <img srcset> attribute or <picture> element to specify responsive images. However, some browsers and crawlers do not understand these attributes. We recommend that you always specify a fallback URL via the img src attribute. The srcset attribute allows specifying different versions of the same image, specifically for different screen sizes. Example: <img srcset> <img srcset="example-320w.jpg 320w, example-480w.jpg 480w, example-800w.jpg 800w" sizes="(max-width: 320px) 280px, (max-width: 480px) 440px, 800px" src="example-800w.jpg" alt="responsive web">The <picture> element is a container that is used to group different <source> versions of the same image. It offers a fallback approach so the browser can choose the right image depending on device capabilities, like pixel density and screen size. The picture element also comes in handy for using new image formats with built-in graceful degradation for clients that may not yet support the new formats. We recommend that you always provide an img element as a fallback with a src attribute when using the picture tag using the following format: Example: <picture> <picture> <source type="image/svg+xml" srcset="pyramid.svg"> <source type="image/webp" srcset="pyramid.webp"> <img src="pyramid.png" alt="large PNG image..."> </picture>Optimize for SafeSearchSafeSearch is a setting in Google user accounts that specifies whether to show or block explicit images, videos, and websites in Google Search results. Make sure Google understands the nature of your site so that Google can apply SafeSearch filters to your site if appropriate. Learn more about labeling SafeSearch pages. And finally...Please read our SEO Starter Guide which contains lots of useful information to rank better. If you have more questions, post them in the Google Search Central Help Community. |