Google Confirms Image Thumbnails May Take Time to Update

Google has confirmed that it's normal for image thumbnails in search results to take time to update. According to John Mueller, this can happen even if a website updates its primary image through JSON-LD markup. In fact, Mueller stated that the delay is not unexpected when an image remains prominent on the page.

One example of this issue was highlighted by Adam from Inspired Taste, who replaced the primary image for his easy baked apples recipe with a new one two weeks ago. However, Google Search still displayed the old image in its search results.

Mueller replied to Adam's concern on Bluesky and acknowledged that he would pass the note on to the team. He explained that the image was still visible on the page and continued to exist on the site, which led to it being picked as a thumbnail again.