Google Discover

Summary

1. SolarReviews dropping from Google Discover directly aligns with the redesign / migration of the blog, which also directly aligns with the drop in clicks and impressions to images on the site.
1. And perhaps/likely, the lack of 301 redirection.
2. How SolarReviews HTML defines the main image of an article within a div tag and within the style attribute is preventing the article from appearing within Google Discover—and likely Google’s index. It should be included within an img tag instead. Or Articles should include additional high-quality, large, and relevant images in addition to the main image being populated via CSS.
3. An image sitemap may be a workaround for the above, and is worth testing.
4. Fixr is not impacted by this issue (as they have many images embedded within articles—or as impacted by this issue, at the very least).
5. Both properties should set the max-image-preview: [setting] and set it to large.
6. SolarReviews should revert the datePublished and dateModified schema markup properties back to ISO format.

• Summary
• SolarReviews / Google Discover / Images
• div & style vs img
• Image Sitemap
• Fixr
• max-image-preview: [setting]
• datePublished & dateModified

SolarReviews / Google Discover / Images

Consistent clicks and impressions from Google Discover abruptly stops on March 20, 2024.

Clicks and impressions to images on the site abruptly decline on March 19, 2024.

div & style vs img

When the blog was migrated to Statamic, the main image of an article was defined within a div element using CSS:

<div class="bg-cover bg-center h-72 lg:h-96 w-full relative z-0 mt-6 md:rounded-lg overflow-hidden" style="background-image: url("https://frontend-cdn.solarreviews.com/tesla-ev-chargers.jpg");">

Instead of within an img tag:

<img src="https://www.solarreviews.com/content/images/blog/post/focus_images/160_how-do-tesla-chargers-compare-to-other-electric-car-chargers-main.jpg" class="w-full" alt="tesla charger">

Furthermore, CSS background images cannot add an “alt” attribute, so less context is provided to Google about the image.

And this is assuming Google is even indexing these background images—a site:search within Google Images for SolarReviews displays images populated via img tags, and not those via CSS.

Perhaps, because it was impractical to 301 redirect images within the blog during the migration has further leant to this.

One solution could be ensuring all articles have additional images within the content, going so far as even to reusing the main image of the article populated via CSS.

Image Sitemap

An image sitemap could be a possible workaround for this issue. And would be my first recommendation as a step.

This would be done via Screaming Frog and uploaded similar to an XML sitemap (which is what it essentially is).

Fixr

Fixr’s Google Discover data has been consistent.

The property has not experienced any decline in clicks and impressions to images.

And although the main image of its articles are defined via CSS as well, articles typically contain multiple additional images embedded within the content.

max-image-preview: [setting]

Google Search Central document on Discover specifies that properties should include the max-image-preview: [setting]:

Include compelling, high-quality images in your content, especially large images that are more likely to generate visits from Discover. Large images need to be at least 1200 px wide and enabled by the max-image-preview:large setting, or by using AMP. Avoid using a site logo as your image.

This is missing from both SolarReviews and Fixr. However, since clearly both properties received or are receiving traffic from Google Discover without this set, this is more likely a “nice to have” vs a requirement. Or that images are already at least 1200 px wide supersedes this. However, on the three Google Discover results I spot checked from my Android device, each property had this implemented (they were also not using the RSS feed implementation/Google feature).

datePublished & dateModified

The Discover content policies document states:

Visitors to your site want to trust and understand who writes and publishes the content they read. That's why news sources on Google should provide:

• Clear dates and bylines
• Information about the authors, publication, and publisher
• Information about the company or network behind the content
• Contact information

Although “Updated 4 weeks ago” sounds pretty clear to me, on the backend via schema markup the datePublished and dateModified properties are using non-standard values, i.e.:

"dateModified":"4 weeks ago", "datePublished":"5 years ago",

vs

{
"dateModified": "2024-05-18T00:00:00Z",
"datePublished": "2019-06-15T00:00:00Z"
}

If we’re being extra picky / extra pre-cautious, this standardized formatting should be used when the schema markup is updated for the blog.