Did you know that Google Search does not support the AVIF image format? At least not yet. Google Search doesn't list it on its supported image formats and Google Image Search simply won't index them. But John Mueller of Google said on X, "I'm sure this won't be necessary long term."
Meaning, Google will eventually support the AVIF image format in the future - but when is the big question.
Jon Henshaw reported that while WordPress is adding support for AVIS image formats, just like Apple did recently.
But as Jon pointed out, Google Search does not yet support AVIF images. The list of supported image formats by Google reads:
Google Search supports images in the following formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, and SVG.
Here is where John Mueller of Google said Google will likely support it in the future and a work around until then:
(Would love for @JohnMu, @dannysullivan, or anyone else to speak into/verify this)
— Alex MacArthur (@amacarthur) March 26, 2024
But ... honestly ... we should just be better at supporting modern image formats in search, so I'm sure this won't be necessary long term.
— John (@JohnMu) March 26, 2024
Hmmm. Maybe Google is testing supporting AVIF images?
I also didn't believe Google was supporting avif yet, but just tested some searches with filetype operator in Google Images and that did return avif files. Interesting. See screenshots below. Maybe Google is starting to support them?? @johnmu https://t.co/JTHvv4G2Na pic.twitter.com/Q53NONs7fE
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 26, 2024
Forum discussion at X.
Update: Martin Splitt from Google added on X, "Image Search and Googlebot-Images are fascinatingly different beasts from the standard websearch. The infrastructure is quite different and we're seeing what we can do in terms of AVIF, but there's nothing to announce at this point."
Image Search and Googlebot-Images are fascinatingly different beasts from the standard websearch. The infrastructure is quite different and we're seeing what we can do in terms of AVIF, but there's nothing to announce at this point.
— Martin Splitt (@g33konaut) April 3, 2024
