Knowledge base v2.13.0 · Community edition · data through 2 October 2026
Thing · Product
Google's image search, which shows images from the web with a link to the page that hosts them.
Documented in
Google's video SEO guide says a video must be embedded on an indexed watch page to be eligible for video features and recommends a dedicated watch page per video where it makes sense for the business; a non-watch page with the video can still appear as a text result or a Google Images result with a video badge.
Google Search Central · Day 2 · Using images to your advantage and Engaging Search users with videos
Google's image metadata guide says Google Images supports the IPTC Digital Source Type values for algorithmically created images, such as trainedAlgorithmicMedia, and can show C2PA details in 'About this image', such as whether an image was created or edited with AI tools.
Google Search Central · Day 2 · Using images to your advantage and Engaging Search users with videos
Slide and stage claims that name it, the ones Google’s documentation does not cover first.
Image results shown among web results come from Google's image index and are roughly the same images that Google Images shows for the same query.
Product annotations on Google Images results also come from product structured data and do not need Google Merchant Center.
Visual search predates transformers in Google's own history: its Search timeline dates Google Images to 2001 and Google Lens to 2017, the year Google Research published the Transformer, so read the stage remark as being about today's multimodal AI search.
Ibrahim Anjro · Day 1 · What's new in the world of Search
Images that should rank need an img element with a real src; hero or product images set as CSS backgrounds are invisible to Google Images and image features, so keep CSS backgrounds for decorative images you do not need indexed.
Ibrahim Anjro · Day 2 · Using images to your advantage and Engaging Search users with videos
While the AVIF ingestion hiccup Gary Illyes mentioned lasts, serve AVIF only through source elements inside picture and keep a WebP or JPEG file in the img src, which is the URL Google extracts, even though Google's documentation lists AVIF as supported; then check in Google Images that key images appear.
Ibrahim Anjro · Day 2 · Using images to your advantage and Engaging Search users with videos
For an online shop, Product structured data is enough for product rich results and Google Images product annotations, but the Shopping tab needs a Merchant Center feed too; keep feed and markup values identical, since Google can use the markup to validate the feed.
Ibrahim Anjro · Day 3 · How Search results are born
Kit items about Google Images: their own words name it, or several of the claims they rest on do.
Rests on 9 claims, 2 of them naming Google Images; its own words name Google Images
Keep the IPTC and C2PA metadata that marks AI-generated images
Rests on 4 claims, 1 of them naming Google Images; its own words name Google Images
Things named in the same claim, with the number of claims they share.