Yoast SEO 12.4: Image in snippet preview

After releasing several updates to our snippet preview in previous releases, Yoast SEO 12.4 now shows an image for your post in the mobile snippet preview, just like Google would. We have several other improvements and fixes for you in store with Yoast SEO 12.4. Find out more!

Featured image in the mobile snippet preview

Not too long ago, Google made several changes in the way they present results on mobile. To mimic that, we started updating our snippet preview. In the latest iteration, we see a favicon (added in Yoast SEO 11.5, enhanced in 12.1) and new font sizes (added in 12.1).

The one thing missing from the current snippet preview in Yoast SEO is that of an image. For some search results on mobile, Google will now show the main image next to it. In Yoast SEO 12.4, we automatically use your featured image to mimic the way Google does this now. We’ll use the first image in your content if you haven’t set a featured image. Remember, this only works in the mobile snippet preview.

Schema structured data content blocks

Our Schema structured data content blocks for the block editor have proven to be a valid way to quickly get rich results for these types of content. The two current content blocks, namely FAQ and HowTo blocks, are incredibly easy to add, update and publish. They give you valid structured data for that content and thus a great chance of getting rich results. Be sure to try them out! In Yoast SEO 12.4, we’ve improved the findability of the blocks in the block editor library to help even more people find and use them.

Fixes and enhancements

For this release, we had several users contributions. Emily Leffler Schulman suggested to change the readability score for empty content from “Needs Improvement” with a red icon to “Not Available” with a gray icon. This makes it less confronting for users. Emily also updated the URLs used to ping Google and Bing about the location of a sitemap. Steven Franks added information to the Twitter settings to make it more clear why you should enable Open Graph. Thanks both!

We also fixed a number of bugs in this release. One of these bugs made it impossible to set Twitter and Facebook images for attachment pages. Another bug concerned the visibility of a nested paragraph in the “noindex” metabox warning. Plus, we clear up the last of the Google+ data, there was still some leftovers in the settings export.

Update to Yoast SEO 12.4

That’s Yoast SEO 12.4 for you! We’ve updated the mobile snippet preview with the latest changes by Google and we fixed several bugs. A number enhancements makes Yoast SEO a little bit easier to use. Update to the latest version at your convenience!