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Publish Recipes? Google Just Changed the Image Size Requirements in Schema

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recipe-schema-markup-sizeIf you publish recipes on your website, you will want to pay attention to this change.  Google is increased the minimum image size required to show a recipe thumbnail in the Google search results.

The change size is not huge, but if you use a plugin that created a specially sized thumbnail image for the recipe schema markup, you will need to update all your images to reflect the new size.

The old size for recipes is 148px x 148pc minimum.  The new image size for recipe schema is 185px x 185px minimum.

recipe-schema-markup-size-1

Why the change?  I suspect this was done to better reflect image sizes we see in recipe carousels and in the card style recipe layout to accommodate various mobile device sizes.

Those who use recipe schema will want to verify that their recipe thumbnails are larger than 185px x 185px.  There is the possibility that an image compression plugin could have made these changes as well, when reducing image sizes as much as possible to reduce load time.  Or some recipe plugins could have auto-generated thumbnails based on the old sizes.

To check your image sizes in the schema markup, use the Structured Data Testing Tool to verify.  Remember, even if you have a larger image on the page, some plugin could have used a smaller thumbnail specifically for the schema markup.

For those not familiar with the testing tool, this is what you need to look for:

recipe-schema-markup-size-3

Then you can copy and paste that URL into your browser to ensure it is large enough – when the image has loaded, you can right click the image and select the image info to see what actual size the thumbnail image is.

Google also changed the size for movies and television thumbnails in Schema too.  The old size is 112px x 168px minimum, and the new size is 140px x 210px minimum.

H/T Aaron Bradley

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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