Do you use AMP carousels to attract traffic to your website?  If so, there’s a chance that your images will need a little bit of work. Google has made an update to the article schema, which means that all the images used for AMP articles now need to be a minimum of 1,2000 pixels wide and equal 800,000 pixels overall.

The previous image size minimum for images used in the top stories carousel was 696 pixels wide and 300K in total. This goes to show that the increase in image size is quite significant. If you have been receiving traffic from the tip stories carousel, you will need to make sure they meet the new requirements to avoid losing the traffic source.

Further guidelines by Google for those working on the AMP articles include the following:

• Each page has to contain a minimum of one image. Google will then choose the image to use in the search results that will be based on the aspect ratio and resolution.
• Make sure the image URLs can be indexed and crawled by Google.
• The images have to be in one of the following formats to work: .jpg, .png, or .gif.
• The images need to represent the marked up content.
• The aspect ratios of the images should be: 1×1, 4×3 and 16×9.

When using AMP Articles, ensure that only a marked up image directly relating to the article is specified. Learn more about the update and the general requirements by visiting the developers article, here.

Interested in learning more about AMP articles top stories carousels and how they can increase traffic to your website via the search engine? Get in touch and ask us about our SEO and digital marketing services.