Earlier this month, we reported that Google has been investigating a bug with its recipe rich results where the images would disappear from the recipe results. This can obviously be devastating in terms of click through rates and traffic to those sites with these recipes. The worst part, it is now the Thanksgiving cooking season and it is still not fixed.
This is similar, if not the same, as the recipe bug from the month before that had images dropping out of these recipe cards. Here is one example, although this one is now working for me.
Here is when the image is missing:
Here is when the image is working:
The image can be do or die for the searcher clicking on the recipe or not.
The trick is to get Google to recrawl and index the page using Google's URL Inspection Tool. Which is not fun for a recipe site that is missing tons of images.
Danny Sullivan and John Mueller of Google are working on it with the appropriate Google teams, but it is taking a lot of time...
We are, as I've said to others who have asked recently:https://t.co/jZKND2mB5Ohttps://t.co/6JO5GmdX40https://t.co/w5ov5tJLPvhttps://t.co/S3TOQgtRUa
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 19, 2019
That approximates the tweets we get on this. We're aware. Both @JohnMu and I have been following up.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) November 12, 2019
Jeff Hawley, who is on top of this recipe bug, said it is still not fixed as of this morning:
Still not fixed. I can grab some live examples shortly if needed.
— Jeff Hawley (@hashtagjeff) November 26, 2019
Hopefully Google will fix it really soon...
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Google may now be fixing it...
Doing some digging and this is the first morning I'm actually seeing some improvement. I know many of the sites I follow on this issue are actively submitting recipes in GSC though. @Downshiftology @livewellbake @grandbabycake are you seeing improvement?
— Jeff Hawley (@hashtagjeff) November 26, 2019
Update 2: Maybe not...
Ok, I can confirm that it's still happening on quite a few still. Does appear to be improved, but that might be because more site owners submitting in GSC regularly. Here's a current one from @Downshiftology pic.twitter.com/PdxsFDoqUI
— Jeff Hawley (@hashtagjeff) November 26, 2019
I’m not seeing any improvement. It just seems to be getting worse for my site. I’ve tried resubmitting in GCS but my images do not reappear. Here’s some more examples: pic.twitter.com/Xx6Avuctf6
— Danielle (@livewellbake) November 26, 2019
Update 3: Jeff shared how important these snippets are...
Hey @rustybrick here's something interesting to share. If people are wondering whether snippets make a difference or not here, they do! One example where they have been getting the snippet on and off for a month or two due to the bug... pic.twitter.com/IYtP4SWafg
— Jeff Hawley (@hashtagjeff) November 26, 2019
