Page 31 - SEO Mad Scientist 2020 Report

Update: April 3, 2020

1. Change the image name and upload a different one with the same URL. We were able
to get this snippet to change shortly after sending out the last update.
2. Move the image to the bottom of the page and replace with a new one. After some time
we still hadn’t seen any update in the image snippet. This led us to believe the signals
Google is using to choose the snippet (or possibly any rich media) doesn’t necessarily
have to do with placement on the page, but likely multiple signals are considered
3. Change the target terms in the 50 words before and after the snippet image to include
the target terms before and after a different image, removing them from the current
snippet context. Initially, Google took away the snippet completely for the target term
almost immediately after being recrawled, but our speculations were correct. It wasn't
long after the March 27th update that we saw the snippet switch.

From all our tests and observations, it’s safe to conclude image size does correlate as a strong
signal and the image snippet is pulled based on the below manipulatable signals):

● Terms around the image
● Image Name
● Image Description
● Image Size

Update: April 24, 2020

We reviewed our image test where we moved the image to the bottom of the page and put a
new one in the spot that Google was pulling the snippet from. Previously this was our only test
that didn’t produce a result, but as of this update, we saw Google had switched the snippet.

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