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Google Clarified How It Selects Preview Images for Google Search and Google Discover: It Uses Both schema.org and og:image
Google recently updated two key documentation pages — Image SEO best practices and the Google Discover section. They now clearly state that when selecting a thumbnail (preview image) for Search and Discover, the system automatically analyzes multiple sources, but you can significantly influence the choice by using schema.org markup or the og:image meta tag.
Why this matters for marketers
A high-quality, attractive preview image can increase CTR by 20–50% in regular search and significantly boost the likelihood of a click in Discover (where the image is one of the main attention drivers).
A poor or irrelevant image (for example, a site logo) can mean losing thousands of clicks per month.
How Google selects preview images
Google explicitly outlines three main ways to “signal” which image should become the primary one:
schema.org primaryImageOfPage
Specify the primaryImageOfPage property for the WebPage type with a URL or a full ImageObject.
Link the image to the main entity of the page
Add the image property (URL or ImageObject) to the main content entity using mainEntity or mainEntityOfPage.
Classic og:image
A standard Open Graph tag in the <head>:HTML<meta property="og:image" content="https://example.com/images/hero-1200x630.jpg">
Google emphasizes that both approaches (structured data + og:image) work in both Search and Discover.
Image Selection and Preparation Recommendations
To maximize the chances of getting a strong thumbnail, follow these rules (explicitly highlighted in 2026 documentation):
Relevance & Representativeness
The image should clearly reflect the essence of the article/page.
Avoid:
- Generic images (company logo, icons)
- Images with a large amount of text
- Extreme aspect ratios (too narrow or too wide)
Technical parameters (Especially for Discover)
- Width ≥ 1200 px
- High resolution (preferably 300,000+ pixels)
- Ideal 16:9 aspect ratio
- Better to crop the image yourself to landscape rather than rely on automatic cropping
Additional requirements for Discover
- Use
max-image-preview:largein the robots meta tag (or AMP). - Ensure
og:imagecontains exactly the image you want displayed in the Discover card.
Why you should do this now
- Higher CTR in regular search — especially for news, articles, recipes, and reviews.
- More traffic from Discover — where the image is often more important than the headline.
- Competitive advantage — many sites still use a logo in og:image or don’t specify a preferred image at all.
What a marketer / SEO specialist should do this week
- Review all key pages (especially those receiving traffic from Discover and Top Stories).
- Audit
og:image— is it the article’s hero image or a logo/placeholder? - Add or update structured data (
primaryImageOfPageorimagewithin the main entity). - Prepare images according to recommendations: 1200+ px, 16:9, no text, emotionally engaging.
- Test using Mobile-Friendly Test or Rich Results Test to check which image Google detects as primary.
Important best practices
- Use only JSON-LD (Google prefers it).
- Place the script in the
<head>or at the beginning of<body>. - Number of questions (for FAQ): 3–8 is optimal.
- Answers: 1–4 sentences, without HTML tags inside
"text". - Questions and answers must exactly match visible on-page text.
- Avoid spam — don’t create FAQs “just for markup.”
- Add
max-image-preview:largeif the page contains large images. - Check results in Rich Results Test and Search Console → Enhancements → FAQ.
Simple example
(Insert JSON-LD example here if needed.)
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