Google Pulling Wrong Image (due to provided sizes?)

Do you have some kind of custom code in place that’s changing the recipe metadata? Or any other metadata related plugins?

We don’t output images as “ImageObject” like that but rather as an array of simple URLs. You can see how that looks for this example on our demo site: https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/?hl=en#url=https%3A%2F%2Fdemo.wprecipemaker.com%2Famazing-vegetable-pizza%2F

Since your metadata is using ImageObjects it must be coming from somewhere outside of WP Recipe Maker as our plugin literally does not contain that word.

Any idea which of these could be the culprit?

• Autoptimize (Makes your site faster by optimizing CSS, JS, Images, Google fonts and more.)
• Delucks SEO (Easy WordPress SEO plugin made in Germany. Powerful functions, fast loading times & optimization process for WordPress posts, pages, WooCommerce & more.)
• Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP (Schema & Structured Data adds Google Rich Snippets markup according to Schema.org guidelines to structure your site for SEO. (AMP Compatible))

Altough these are pretty much just some basic plugins that I’m assuming lots and lots of people use…

What are you using “Schema & Structured Data for WP & AMP” for? Our plugin should be the only one taking care of the recipe schema metadata.

It takes care of some global/general info:

• https://ps.w.org/schema-and-structured-data-for-wp/assets/screenshot-3.png?rev=2102249
• https://ps.w.org/schema-and-structured-data-for-wp/assets/screenshot-4.png?rev=2102249

But disabling it actually seems to take care of the imgObject part:

"image":[

"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/K\u00fcrbissuppe_0008-1.jpg",

"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/K\u00fcrbissuppe_0008-1-500x500.jpg",

"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/K\u00fcrbissuppe_0008-1-500x375.jpg",

"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/K\u00fcrbissuppe_0008-1-480x270.jpg"]

But in doing so I realized something else: none of these images are accessible through the browser. My assumption is that the issue is caused by the German “Umlaute” –> those little dots on the o, u or a –> ?, ü, ?. If I change the “\u00fc” to a “ü”, then I can find the image through the browser.

Could the use of special characters have something to do with Google not finding the image mentioned in the markup and thus opting for another image or would you expect that this is caused by the plugin you mentioned?

By the way:

This is the meta-data generated by the tool:

[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"SiteNavigationElement","@id":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/#Oberes Men\u00fc","name":"zMorge","url":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/category\/nach-mahlzeit\/zmorge\/"},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"SiteNavigationElement","@id":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/#Oberes Men\u00fc","name":"Hauptmahlzeiten","url":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/category\/nach-mahlzeit\/hauptmahlzeiten\/"},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"SiteNavigationElement","@id":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/#Oberes Men\u00fc","name":"Beilagen","url":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/category\/nach-mahlzeit\/beilagen\/"},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"SiteNavigationElement","@id":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/#Oberes Men\u00fc","name":"S\u00fcsses","url":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/category\/nach-mahlzeit\/suesses\/"},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"SiteNavigationElement","@id":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/#Oberes Men\u00fc","name":"Snacks","url":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/category\/nach-mahlzeit\/snacks\/"},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"SiteNavigationElement","@id":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/#Oberes Men\u00fc","name":"\u00dcber mich","url":"https:\/\/avobelle.com\/uebermich\/"}]},

This plus the ImageObject part. Everything else seems to be exactly the same with or without the plugin enabled.

Both might actually be issues. I’ll have to do some testing with the Umlaute. But I do have to recommend not using that plugin or checking with them if it’s possible not to change our metadata.

Will look into both aspects and report back! Would love to keep the other plugin though, as they provide markup for the about me page and similar as well.

I was just looking into this and I cannot actually replicate the issue on my end. I tested uploading an image named “Réc?pe-imüge.png” and the URL in the metadata did not replace those special characters and stayed like this:
https://wordpress.local/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Réc?pe-imüge.png

Not sure why that’s not the case for you. Maybe another plugin or some kind of server configuration?

We essentially just use the default wp_get_attachment_image_src() function to get that image URL, so I don’t think the problem is caused by anything on our end.

thanks for checking Brecht! I will look into this again ??

I played around with my images some more and have gained some interesting insights based on individual examples (not sure if this is generally valid).

Short recap:

I have a main post image for each post, as well as a couple additional images per post. One of these additional images is an image designed for Pinterest pins. This Pinterest image has been added after all the other images. In WP Recipe Maker I am using the main post image.

Issue: On some posts, Google is pulling the wrong image for rich results (–> i.e. the Pinterest image). After a while I realized that this only affects posts/images that have “Umlaute” in the name (??ü).

So I tried two things:

1. Uploading the exact same images again (except for the Pinterest image, so that the Pinterest image is actually the oldest one).
2. Changing image names to not include any Umlaute and then uploading them again (except for the Pinterest image, so that the Pinterest image is actually the oldest one).

When just uploading the images again, Google actually started pulling one of the new images (but not per se the main post image). But then, after also removing the Umlaute and uploading the images again, Google started using the correct image.

This is probably just one of many factors that need to come together, but in my case this seems to have been the/a deciding factor.

Also: I tried to then uplad the Pinterest image again, so that it is the newest image again. But Google seems to still be pulling the correct image.

If you get stuck like me, maybe this helps ˉ\_(ツ)_/ˉ

Thanks for the update!

Unfortunately it’s really hard to tell what Google actually does, so this information might help someone piece together the puzzle.

I’ll have to do some more testing as well.