Why it matters
For Discover, Google recommends large images at least 1,200 px wide, with more than 300,000 pixels and a 16x9 aspect ratio, enabled by max-image-preview:large (DEV-IDX-04); a small thumbnail lowers click-through and a large one raises it. Avoid generic images such as the site logo, text-heavy images and misleading or exaggerated ones. The image named in schema.org markup or og:image can influence the thumbnail Discover chooses.
How to meet it
Make a lead image at least 1,200 px wide a required field of article templates, output it in og:image and in the Article markup's image list (DEV-SDA-13), crop 16x9 versions that keep the important details, and fall back to no image rather than the logo.
How to test it
A crawl of article URLs finds on each an og:image at least 1,200 px wide that is not the logo; Search Console's Discover report shows impressions for article templates.
How Regensbot covers it
Decided from one URL.
An audit reads the response, the headers, the HTML, robots.txt, the sitemaps and the structured data, and the finding shows the evidence it saw.
Sources
Google documents01
Claims in the knowledge base06
- D3-C224ConfirmedUncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverShown on screen
- D3-C225ConfirmedUncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverShown on screen
- D3-C226ConsistentUncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverShown on screen
- D3-C227SourceUncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverGoogle's documentation
- D3-C221ConsistentUncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverShown on screen
- D3-C230n/aUncovering Trustworthy Experiences on DiscoverThe author's interpretation
Claim IDs refer to the Search Central Live 2026 knowledge base. The knowledge base (opens in a new tab)
- Confirmed
- Google's documentation states the same thing.
- Consistent
- Google's documentation supports it without stating it.
- Source
- The claim is the cited document itself.
- n/a
- Nothing to verify: a quotation, framing, opinion or analysis.