Yesterday, Google sent out a bunch of notifications via Google Search Console to let some publishers know that they are missing out on Google Discover traffic. Google has sent out notifications from Search Console for Google Discover before but this time this notice says that you are missing out on potential Google Discover traffic.
Specifically, it is recommending these publishers use the max-image-preview robots meta tag setting to feed Google larger images so it can be used in Google Discover.
Both Eli Schwartz and Glenn Gabe shared screen shots with me on Twitter. The emails say "make your content more visually engaging on Discover." It then says:
Google Discover shows content to more than 800 million active users related to their interests. To best engage users on Discover, your site needs great content that people want to read, as well as high quality, compelling images 1200px wide or larger.We wanted to bring to your attention that some or all of your page images are currently eligible to appear only in thumbnail size (50px wide) on Discover as well as in all forms of Google Search results such as Google web search, Google Images and Assistant. If you would like to enable large image previews (>1200px wide) for your content on these surfaces, you can do so by applying the max-image-preview:[large] robots meta tag setting.
So Google promotes Discover? pic.twitter.com/6qYtgqwpEQ
— Eli Schwartz (@5le) October 20, 2020
New email from Google to publishers when they don't have larger images (which Google likes for Discover). I included that info during a crawl analysis and audit for the site about a month ago. Having Google reinforce that is a good thing. Larger & higher-quality images FTW! :) pic.twitter.com/HNLqqxZKrN
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) October 20, 2020
You can learn more about that robots meta tag over here.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
