Over the past couple of days I am seeing more reports of people seeing Google multiple display product image thumbnails throughout the mobile search results snippets. Not just a few but in excess. Yes, Google does show product image thumbnails in the snippets, they have been for years, but it seems like Google may be dialing it up to show more.
Mordy Oberstein shared a photo of this on Twitter a week or so ago:
Last night, Martin MacDonald shared a screen recording of this which shows how many watch product images he saw for a query:
WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THIS SERP??? @rustybrick ? pic.twitter.com/PPtRcCU9nu
— 🌴 Martin MacDonald 🌴 (@searchmartin) March 15, 2021
RankRanger, I believe, does track these occurrences and it seems there is a spike in how often Google is showing these image thumbnails in the search result snippets (although, RankRanger may be tracking these in the desktop results?):
Maybe desktop as well, I am seeing more reports on desktop after posting this:
Google is testing links with one image in SERP.@rustybrick @glenngabe @JohnMu @methode @semrush @sejournal @sengineland @sewatch pic.twitter.com/YuotmkQvYg
— Pradeep (@pradeepihpl) March 17, 2021
Martin said on Twitter "it's only triggered on the singular "watch," not "watches" and other brands, ie Omega, TAG, Rolex also have them, but only one or two on the first page, not most of the results."
In any event, don't be surprised if you see a lot more images in the snippets, espesially for e-commerce related searches.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
