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Google's top stories carousel is not loading all the images for those articles. It seems like a bug is causing some of the images to not show up as of early this morning.
I've received numerous reports of this in the morning (I thought I'd sleep in until 6:30 since I am on a family vacation but this is big). I am able to replicate this, see the WSJ image not loading here (click to enlarge):
Here are other reports sent to me:
Is it a bug or Google filtering images related to specific Keywords @dannysullivan @JohnMu @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/Xp4X6aMxKB
— Rudra Kasturi (@kasturitagore) August 18, 2021
@dannysullivan - Top Stories article's images are showing blank on Google.
— Prakash pandey (@prakashpandey07) August 18, 2021
It's a temporary bug or any new practice we have to follow for news articles? @JohnMu @rustybrick @nishu_kadian pic.twitter.com/Bpng2trKhs
@searchliaison @dannysullivan @rustybrick
— Soni Sharma (@soniseo) August 18, 2021
Google news carousel showing blank images today on desktop as well as mobile devices. is it a bug or SERP update? pic.twitter.com/HMerYoC2uY
@rustybrick something unusual in Top Stories
— RAJDEEP DAS (@RajdeepDDigital) August 18, 2021
No Featured image preview in "Top Stories"#GoogleNews #GoogleSearch #TopStories #Google #SEO #searchengineoptimization #searchengine pic.twitter.com/MQSchZ1qYo
Hmm. Not sure what's going on here. Across various SERP features on Google (top stories and tweet carousels in particular) I'm seeing image previews missing. Either blank or blurred out like pictured. Likely a bug but is quite strange... pic.twitter.com/zvayPrzoq3
— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) August 18, 2021
The latest news stories are appearing without thumbnail images on Google Search. This is seen across all the Publishers. Is it another Google bug? Coincidentally there is a Google Discover traffic drop happening from yesterday. And we know Discover loves images.@glenngabe pic.twitter.com/oBxCKKTPta
— Dinesh Kumar (@dineshrockie) August 18, 2021
So this seems like a bug on Google's end, tons of publishers are impacted and I suspect Google will fix this soon.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Google's John Mueller said it seems to be an issue on Google's end:
Yeah, it looks like an issue on our side.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) August 18, 2021
Update 2: At 9:20am ET, this is still an issue:
It is still an issue - bug Google is aware of the images not all loading in top stories and some other places. pic.twitter.com/fRKrWt8gIF
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 18, 2021
Update 3: Google's official channel confirmed the issue now:
We are working to fix a bug that is causing some images in Top Stories on Google Search results not to render properly. Our apologies -- we hope to have this cleared up quickly!
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 18, 2021
Update 4: At 5pm ET, the issue is still not resolved:
Still not fully fixed yet - wonder the impact on CTR to publishers... https://t.co/y9HxWyM8fN pic.twitter.com/890jOGkvW1
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) August 18, 2021
Update 5: On August 19th at 3:13pm ET, Google said the "bug has now been largely mitigated."
This bug has now been largely mitigated.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 19, 2021
