How to make Search and Discover show your perfect image

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 :HTML 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:large in the robots meta tag (or AMP). Ensure og:image contains 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 (primaryImageOfPage or image within 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 or at the beginning of . 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:large if 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.) Read this article in Ukrainian.