Google: Increase Discover Traffic with Max Image Preview Tag
Google published a new case study showing how using the Max Image Preview directive can increase clicks to as high as 333%. The directive is a meta tag that’s easy to add to a site.
Google Discover and Large Images
Google Discover is a way to show articles to users who have shown an interest in a specific topic. For example, users who search for articles about used car reviews might see recommendations for articles about buying used cars.
Discover is an alternate source of traffic that can help attract visitors who are interested in the topic of a publishers website.
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So instead of ranking for search queries, a publisher needs to make their pages attractive within the Google Discover format.
How Max Image Preview Builds Google Discover Traffic
Google recommends using a meta tag called Max Image Preview in order to maximize click through rates when Google shows a site in Google discover.
The Max Image Preview meta tag tells Google what size image to show in the preview when a publishers web page is shown in Discover.
This meta tag is a directive, which means that Google is obligated to follow the instructions contained in the meta tag.
Google recommends setting the meta tag to tell Google to show the largest image on the page. Large images, when shown in Google Discover, helps the page stand out and results in more traffic.
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Related: 11 Important Image SEO Tips You Need to Know
Max Image Preview Settings
This is what the Max Image Preview meta tag looks like:
The part that’s labeled “robots” means that the meta tag is meant for software called “robots” that crawl the web looking for web pages. Robots are also known as crawlers and spiders (because they crawl the web).
The part that’s labeled “content” is the setting that tells Google what size image to show.
There are three settings: None, standard and large.
Google interprets each setting like this:
“none: No image preview is to be shown.
standard: A default image preview may be shown.
large: A larger image preview, up to the width of the viewport, may be shown.”
Large is the setting that Google recommends publishers use if they want Google to send the maximum amount of traffic.
Absence of the meta tag causes Google to use the default image preview.
Case Studies Illustrate Usefulness of Max Image Preview Tag
Google published two case studies illustrating how a simple meta tag could result in dramatic increases in traffic.
The first case study was of a food blog that was able to increase their click through rate from Discover by 79%.
The second case study was of a Brazilian magazine. After implementing the meta tag their click through rate increased by 30% and their clicks increased by 333% over a period of six months.
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The case study quoted the magazine publisher:
“The adoption of the meta tag with large image preview settings brought a meaningful increase in clicks and CTR for us. Initiatives like this one make a huge difference in the work that we, publishers, invest in day-to-day life.”
Related: Google Discover: 10 Characteristics of Top-Performing Content [Study]
Too Good to Ignore
This tip for increasing clicks from Google discover by using a meta tag is too easy to pass up for sites that have articles that may be eligible to be shown in Google discover.
Implementing the meta tag is easy and the rewards are potentially high.
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Citations
Google Case Study About Increasing Traffic with Max Image Preview Directive
Large Images in Discover Improve CTR and Increase Visits to Publisher Sites
Google Developers Page Documentation of Max Image Preview Directive
Google Search Central Explainer About Discover Explainer
Get on Discover
Google is Rewriting Title Tags in SERPs
Google is rewriting title tags for a limited amount of pages in search results, often replacing the text with a page’s H1 tag.
It’s known that Google adjusts titles in SERPs by making small tweaks, such as appending a business’s name to the end. But now Google is overriding titles with different text.
SEOs started taking notice of this on August 16, as evidenced by tweets mentioning a “massive” title rewrite on Google.
The scale of title rewrites is unknown at this time, but it’s widespread enough for multiple SEOs to come across it already.
Evidence suggests Google is pulling in text from H1 tags for a majority of these rewrites. However, Lily Ray notes that’s she’s seen Google replace a page’s title with anchor text from an internal link.
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This is interesting… I think someone posted about this earlier today: For this article’s title in the SERP, Google is not only not displaying the tag, it’s also not displaying the . Instead, it’s displaying the anchor text from an internal link to the article. pic.twitter.com/CmQS4Lvgf9 — Lily Ray 😏 (@lilyraynyc) August 17, 2021
Mayank Parmar adds that there are some instances where Google is inserting dates into titles:
For some keywords, Google updated our one article’s title to include the date at the beginning. The date was picked from the URL. It looked something like: 01/08/2021: Article title I changed the title a bit and it seems to be okay now. — Mayank Parmar (@mayank_jee) August 17, 2021
In theory, it sounds like Google may choose to grab any relevant text from a page and display it as the title in SERPs. That’s long been the case for meta descriptions, as Google can dynamically adjust the description in search snippets to better match a user’s query.
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Brodie Clark suggests that this update isn’t limited to one or two factors. Rather, he hypothesizes Google can algorithmically create any text to use as a page’s title:
“From what I can see, there is no “one factor” involved with this change, with an algorithmic approach designed to create better titles in Google’s search results as a whole. Whether that be taking the new title from a header tag or effectively pulling it out of thin air.”
He goes on to present evidence of Google replacing a title with text found on another page of a website. There’s apparently no limit to where the search engine may pull in title text from.
In addition, Clark notes that when Google rewrites a title it tends to be shorter than the original. This suggests an effort to improve readability and enhance the relevance of a result.
If this is anything more than a live test spotted in the wild, Google should notify SEOs about it sooner than later. I wager there will be at least a few questions about this on Friday’s Q&A with Google’s John Mueller.
New: Google’s Danny Sullivan Wants to Fix Page Title Rewrites
What Does This Mean For SEOs?
It’s impossible to draw any conclusions about Google rewriting title tags at this time.
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Google is known to run A/B tests in live search results, so it’s possible what we’re seeing will go back to normal in the near future.
On the other hand, we may be seeing the initial stages of a permanent change. Assuming for a second this is how Google will handle titles in search snippets going forward, it could end up being a good thing for websites.
The apparent goal of replacing titles is to enhance the relevancy for searchers. If that’s the case, a more relevant title could be more compelling to click on.
With regards to how concerned you should be about this update, I’ll point to this guidance from Mueller. He states that titles are important, but suggests they’re not worth stressing over:
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“Titles are important! They are important for SEO. They are used as a ranking factor. Of course, they are definitely used as a ranking factor, but it is not something where I’d say the time you spend on tweaking the title is really the best use of your time.”
For what it’s worth, I haven’t seen any reports of pages with rewritten titles dropping in rankings. So that’s a good indication this change won’t make SEOs’ jobs any more difficult.
New:
Google Displaying Header Tags Instead Of Titles For Search Snippets?
I am seeing numerous complaints this morning that Google is showing header tags, H1s and H2s, instead of the meta title tags, for its search result snippets. I am seeing some public complaints on Twitter, but also in some of the private forums and emails.
So this seems to be more widespread of a change. I tried to quickly replicate it, but I didn’t come up with any examples.
Yes, I know Google might not show the title tag for the clickable link of the Google search result snippet, but often Google does. And based on the early chatter, there may have been a shift in how Google is handling it. Maybe it is a bug or a test, I am not sure.
Here are some of the public mentions of this:
Anyone seeing massive title rewrite on Google? Been noticing it on multiple SERPs for multiple keywords that Google is either pulling H1 or H2 to use for title.@rustybrick #SEO #searchengineoptimization #Google — Jackie Owen (@techjackie) August 17, 2021
Today I saw Google showing H1 tag in SERP rather than meta title.. @glenngabe @rustybrick is their any changes in results ? — Aasif Khan (@theaasifkhan) August 17, 2021
Robert Owen from Timberwise shared a few examples with me, here is one:
If you look at the page, Google is pulling the H1, not the title tag.
Do you see any of this?
Forum discussion at Twitter.