Image featured beside Website listing in Organic Listings

[Denis McCaul]

Hi, see attached image, I heard recently that you could help get an image beside your wesbites organic listing by either having a square image near the top of the website page or by setting a featured image for the page in Wordpress. I did the featured image for three of my client sites a few days ago but none have shown the image up yet, google has cached the pages since then, do I just need to wait longer? Thank you

 

[Conor Treacy]

This may not help much, but when I searched on my browser, I got your home page (no image) but you have an inside page that was triggering an image.

Can you confirm that the size of the image for that inside page is the same as your main page? Maybe there's something off in sizes that it's not pulling the image?

 

[Denis McCaul]

Hi Conor, thanks for the reply, I only added a featured image for the homepage when one was not showing up, that inside page has no featured image set and the image displaying is one from the middle of a large photo gallery!

 

[Conor Treacy]

I wonder if that might be the issue?

Images on the home page are all under the 700px size. Maybe try replacing one of the images in the home page where you have "Our School", "Application Form" etc, and use a larger size image (it will scale automatically in Elementor. See if adding a larger image to this area is what Google needs to find - an actual large image on the page, and not the featured image which is likely used in the OG Image section only.

 

[johnlavapie_SEO]

This article from Sterling Sky might help you: How to Get Images in Mobile Search Results - Sterling Sky Inc

It seems it's may not be based on the Featured Image in WordPress.

 

[DmitryC]

You have to set up schema for your website. You can use schema pro plugin for wordpress to have images show up in search.

 

[JeffClevelandTN]

Hi @Denis McCaul, I just now saw this post and realize it has been a little over a month since the original post date, but wanted to share our experience. The article that @johnlavapie_SEO shared is definitely a good one to explain how the image typically is selected by Google. The steps outlined for mobile are essentially the same as desktop, however I feel the recommendation to use a square image as explained in the article may not be accurate (more on that later). We've utilized both Yoast and Rankmath to help encourage Google to use the picture we've chosen by automating the markup schema needed. I find that Yoast is easier as it simply uses the picture that is selected in WordPress as the "Featured Image" (it looks like you are using Yoast). Rankmath tucks away this setting in the Social Media settings. We also find that actually using the same image on the page, helps sometimes to encourage Google to use that specific image.

However, back to the square image recommendation. Almost a year ago, I posted about Google's use of wide images in mobile SERP results. Rather than repeat the thread, you can view it here: Full Size picture showing up on mobile SERP

BTW: An update, you have to actually use a phone to replicate the results covered in the post, the Anonymous Ad Tool doesn't reliably display images any longer.

Google seems to do a very job of using the same "featured" full-sized image shown on mobile as a square image on desktop, or as square when on mobile if full-size isn't supported. It seems to do a center crop, which should be a consideration when setting your featured image. Being that the huge majority of searches are done on mobile, we make it our standard process to use a full-size (i.e. wider) image as our featured image, just in case Google chooses to display the larger image.

I see that you are from Ireland! My wife and I along with several friends took a trip to the Republic of Ireland, just a few months before Covid started. Absolutely LOVED Dublin and the entire country and people. Can't wait to visit again! Sláinte!

 

[cfazio]

Google chooses to show image rich results depending on if they think it will be helpful to the user or not. I have seen a TON lately. Nearly every search in my industry.

This can be easily solved with schema markup, the designated image in schema will show as the rich image. If you don't have schema markup, google may still show a rich image - but it is picked off of your page and may not be the one you want.

The image you put into your schema doesn't have to be actually on the page for it to show in this rich result placement.