Hello,
I use the theme and realized that for a long time the Google News highlights are wrong! It takes random image and not the highlighted image.
But this is a SUBJECT ERROR! So I installed the Jannah theme for testing and everything worked very well and Google News started to get the images featured correctly.
I would like to know where to correct this error, since I want to continue using NewsPaper, but can not continue with this very serious problem!
Hi,
I believe that if you have a SEO plugin installed it should pick the right image. The theme does not have any options in this matter of it’s own. The og tags added by the SEO plugin should ensure the proper image is picked.
I found this guide on Google recommendations in the matter
– https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/13369?hl=en
– https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/54423/foolproof-way-to-ensure-google-news-pulls-the-correct-image-for-its-thumbnails
You could try a recrawl – https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6065812?hl=en
Or check and submit a sitemap
– https://kb.yoast.com/kb/submit-sitemap-search-engines/
Thanks
hello!
I’ve been using Yoast Premium for a long time.
And my issue with featured image of Google News only happens with Newspaper theme!
Then there is some error in the theme code that is making Google News pick up the wrong image.
It’s just me change to the Jannah theme that the problem is solved.
Check your Google News sitemap. Theme has zero control over what Google News captures (we’ve been in Google news since the 2005 beta, with 15 sites captured daily). Google checks the sitemap first, then uses its classic bot. If there is no image specified (e.g., a featured image set, showing in the Google News sitemap, or if you have your sitemap set to use multiple images), GN may capture the first or largest image in text after first paragraph as was the case prior to GN specific sitemap.
If you have proper open graph meta tags, and a Google News sitemap; those will be the first cases for images captured. When you use certain images as ‘backgrounds’ even if set as featured they may skip that and use first ‘in post’ image.
So, if you are getting different results with SAME post on two different themes, then YOU need to determine WHAT you are doing differently; e.g., again, if you use a large featured image OUTSIDE the post, or as background on one theme, and as inline image in another, Google may treat those as two different things. Not apples to apples.
Theme provides many options for how images are placed; so if Google is not following your ‘Google News Sitemap’ properly, to fall back on the ‘on page capture’ method, which is outside anybody’s control.
Put another way – nothing the theme developers can do — YOU need to choose a page template that works with GN if they are skipping your GN Sitemap for some reason and/or ignoring your og:image tag(s).
Also note, Google may not show images at all sometimes depending on desktop or mobile view; may show mobile view on desktop, etc. They are in a transition to ‘mobile first’ which you can tell when you see vertical story boxes in borders vs old school laundry list method of display.
NEWS GROUPINGS:
ALSO: if your story is a follow-on (clone or ‘also ran’) of a news item already published elsewhere, they may “group” your news item with those as a “related news…” grouping, and choose the first or last post in that group as the image shown, in certain instances; again, nothing you can do about THAT
I understand the information.
The news sitemap is properly configured to grab the highlights images: https://www.search-technology.com/sitemap-news.xml
The always used images are the highlights in both themes.
So I do not know what I do, but it will be the way to use another theme, since the support here to fix is very weak, unlike Jannah that when I needed it, ALL adjustments were made on my site.
If you can not fix it, I’ll request a refund along with Themeforest because the promised support is not being delivered.
Hey chris can you help me with this https://forum.tagdiv.com/topic/td-composer-or-visual-composer-both-not-working/#post-211898
Hi,
As I mentioned before the theme does not have any options in the matter. From what I see most of the posts have the proper thumbnails displayed, but others do not. Since these are all posts and they all have featured images set, the og tags are added properly, in theory there should be no problem. I could not say why Google is picking the wrong image only for some posts.
We will be able to provide a refund if you are not satisfied with the theme
– https://themeforest.net/refund_requests/new
@Aman Singh We will continue the discussion in your own topic.
Thank you!
Google will skip images which may be copied from other sources, already in their index; they may skip images which look like ad banners (‘too much text’), or which have too little photo data (e.g., a gif converted to jpeg might only be 16 colors; vs thousands of colors in a proper photographic image). Images which may contain meta data and not optimized for web may also be skipped.
FYI, Google AMP now ‘requires’ images be at least 696 pixels wide, which means all sites should generally consider moving up from 600x and 640x to 696 (696 is presuming 700 pixel container with one pixel border, for those non technical folks wondering about that). Google News doesn’t yet have this requirement, but it’s something to consider. if the image is too small, they may skip it and use something else.
Similarly – using generic file names is a huge nono. “Image12345.jpg” is bad. “180202-jeg-696×522.jpg” is good. Also, your image file names should always have the dimensions in there, for best results.
Hope that helps.
