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Short answer: for Google Discover, Google recommends large images at least 1200 px wide, more than 300,000 pixels in total, in a 16:9 ratio, with large previews allowed through max-image-preview:large (WordPress adds it by default since version 5.7). Don’t use your logo or a text-heavy graphic as the article image. Article structured data needs no special markup for Top Stories, but if you add it, Google recommends images of at least 50,000 pixels in 16:9, 4:3 and 1:1. Then give every photo alt text that says what it shows. That is what Google Images, screen readers and AI tools read.
This page is for editors and developers running a news site or magazine on WordPress. Every requirement below links to Google’s own documentation, and the last section shows where the ImageSEO plugin can take work off your desk and where it can’t.
Discover is a feed, not a results page, so the image does much of the selling. Google’s Discover documentation (last updated March 2026) lists these recommendations:
| What | Google’s recommendation | What it means in WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| Width | At least 1200 px wide | Upload originals of 1200 px or wider. A 1200×675 image is 16:9 and 810,000 pixels. |
| Total size | More than 300,000 pixels | 1200×675 or 1600×900 both pass easily. A 600×400 image (240,000 px) does not. |
| Ratio | 16:9 | Crop the featured image to 16:9 yourself and keep the key detail inside the crop. |
| Large previews | Enabled by max-image-preview:large or by using AMP |
WordPress 5.7+ adds this robots directive by default on sites open to search engines. Check your page source. |
| Which image | Use schema.org markup or the og:image tag to specify a representative image |
Your SEO plugin usually sets og:image from the featured image. |
| Avoid | Generic images such as your site logo, and text-heavy images | Don’t let the logo become the fallback og:image on articles. |
Quick check: open any article, view the source and search for max-image-preview. You should see max-image-preview:large in the robots meta tag. WordPress core adds it through its robots API unless the site is set to discourage search engines. An SEO plugin or a theme can override it, so check rather than assume.
WordPress itself does not fix one featured image size; your theme decides how it crops and displays it. What matters for search is the file you upload and the image your og:image and structured data point to. A practical newsroom standard:
Google’s Article structured data documentation is clear that “there’s no markup requirement to be eligible for Google News features like Top stories”. Markup still helps Google understand the article, and for the image property it recommends:
Yoast SEO and Rank Math both output Article markup with the featured image. Use Google’s Rich Results Test on one article to see which image URL it actually picks up.
Alt text, caption and credit do different jobs, and news sites often mix them up:
| Field | Job | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Alt text | Says what the photo shows, for screen readers and search engines | alt="Firefighters spraying water on a burning warehouse roof at night" |
| Caption | Adds the news context readers see under the photo | “Crews fought the fire on Harbour Road for six hours, the city said.” |
| Credit | Names the photographer or agency | “Photo: Jane Doe / Agency” |
A few rules that save trouble on news photos:
For more patterns, see our alt text examples by image type.
AI search tools and Google’s AI features build their answers from the text of the pages they fetch. For an image, that text is the alt attribute, the caption and the words around it. Google says it uses alt text “along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page” to understand images. A photo with no alt attribute gives these systems nothing to read about it. Nobody has published reliable data on how much alt text changes AI citations, so we won’t quote a multiplier. We can say how common the gap is: in our July 2026 crawl of the Tranco top 10,000 homepages, 11.3% of 306,634 images had no alt attribute at all (method and limits).
max-image-preview:large present in the robots meta tag on articles.og:image on articles is the article photo, never the logo.alt="".harbour-road-warehouse-fire.jpg, not DSC_0421.jpg).ImageSEO is a WordPress plugin that writes alt text, titles, captions and file names with AI. For a newsroom, two features matter most:
It can write in the language of your site. What it cannot know is who is in a news photo or why it was taken. For photos of identifiable people, an editor should check the name before publishing. AI gives you a correct description of the scene, and the newsroom adds the facts.
What it costs, honestly. Plans are counted in images per month: Free covers 10, Starter €4.99 covers 100, Standard €11.99 covers 250, Premium €24.99 covers 1,000 and Enterprise €59.99 covers 2,500. A site publishing 20 articles a day with two photos each uploads about 1,200 images a month, which fits Enterprise. See all plans on our plans and prices page, or install the free version from WordPress.org and try it on a test article first.
Google recommends images at least 1200 px wide, more than 300,000 pixels in total, in 16:9, with large previews allowed by max-image-preview:large or AMP. A 1200×675 or 1600×900 featured image meets all of these.
No. Google lists max-image-preview:large as the other way to enable large images, and WordPress adds it by default.
No. Google says there is no markup requirement for Google News features like Top stories. Markup is still useful, and if you add it, give the image in 16:9, 4:3 and 1:1.
Not on articles. Google advises against generic images such as your site logo in og:image or schema markup for Discover. Use the article’s own photo.
For describing the scene, yes. For names, places and events it can’t know, no. Use AI for the first draft and let an editor confirm anything factual.
