Massive drop in ranking after Webp support

Hello there,

hope for opinios on that weird matter. Since 2021 I'm running an eCom shop. Due to serveral SEO measures I ranked in the Top3 for the most important keyword and always Top10 for all other relevant keywords for 2022 without blogging and marketing. No Blackhat. I did not even know about BH about a week ago. Due to Googles PageSpeed complaining about modern image format, I added webp support via picture tag on march 15. Simultanisly I changed the scrset size / responsive version of the main product image. Was "picture_600x600.jpg" and I changed it to "picture_700x700.jpg" (the product image was upscaled bc of the layout and looked washy). Nothing else changed. Scr, href attrribut and the metas stayed the same for those images. The "picture_600x600.jpg" image does still exists and is reachable.

Since then I got a HUGE hit on ranking and it barley recovers. Which of course hurts the revenue drastically. Image impressions went down by >90% and also the general search impressions too. For some keywords I felt from position 1 to 70. The product images are indexed. Really mad about that as I followed their suggetions to serve webP and got pentalized for that it seems. GSC does not show any pentalize marks and page speed went up quiet a bit for mobile (mobile score 50 -> 80).

Does Google take the responsive image as the search result output, since that is the only way I can explain that to myself as the base image "picture.jpg" of the href tag never changed?

Does it make sense or would it recover the ranking quick to switch to the old scrset image size?

tarsonis said:

Does it make sense or would it recover the ranking quick to switch to the old scrset image size?

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Are you sure it wasn't just bad timing? Correlation doesn't always equal causation. Check timings against updates, I imagine there's more to this than just changing to webp. You need to rule everything else out first.

I'm inclined to agree with @leechesBleechin, it sounds more like an unfortunate coincidence. If it's easy enough to change back to your old image formats, by all means do so and see if it has any effect. But unless there have been significant code changes to your pages as a result of the image format change, I can't see it resulting in a penalty.

Hey, thanks for your feedback guys. I know it sounds completly nuts. Since I protocoll every change that is done in backups, I know this is the only thing that changed in that time frame. If you have a look on the GSC impressions it started exactly after the webp support was active on the 15th march.

https://ibb.co/YN3vfjV

The only coincedence is the Google search core update which started to roll out on 15th march too.

Since from the point of view of technical SEO it would be good to keep the webp suppport as also the mobile score went up quiet significant. This is a hard decision as I was hoping it will recover. But if they take the 600w image as product reference for the search result output then this would explain it.

I switched from jpg to webp in December, the impressions dropped for a while but recovered then. Maybe you have to wait a little longer. You should definitly implement a fallback to png or jpg.

SEOPartner said:

I switched from jpg to webp in December, the impressions dropped for a while but recovered then. Maybe you have to wait a little longer. You should definitly implement a fallback to png or jpg.

View attachment 252602

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It is totally possible depending on how you migrated from your JPG/PNG/etc to WEBP
if it's an redirect, that could be overall slowing your website, this becomes even more true when your hosting is subpar at best.
Some "img optimizers" plugins are very very bloated and slows down your website as it is on aswell since it is just constantly running.

However, unless you are running a pure shitbox as hosting, and your site isn't optimized either + having lots of pictures everywhere, heavy ones too.
I am very inclined to lean towards @leechesBleechin opinion that it was probably a concidence.

Think back OP, what else was modified, added or changed both on and off site.

I switched from jpg to webp in December, the impressions dropped for a while but recovered then. Maybe you have to wait a little longer. You should definitly implement a fallback to png or jpg.

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Ok, thanks for the input. That is good information. Took a month as I see on your graph? The stupid part for me is that I also changed the scset size of the main product image. From an objective perspsective it is a "new" file but as I said that is completly nut or a bug in Google if they really take the respnsive image url as reference for the search result output.
I have it implemented it via <picture> tag so there is the fallback to jpgs with the downside having more code on the page.

xReminisce said:

It is totally possible depending on how you migrated from your JPG/PNG/etc to WEBP
if it's an redirect, that could be overall slowing your website, this becomes even more true when your hosting is subpar at best.
Some "img optimizers" plugins are very very bloated and slows down your website as it is on aswell since it is just constantly running.

However, unless you are running a pure shitbox as hosting, and your site isn't optimized either + having lots of pictures everywhere, heavy ones too.
I am very inclined to lean towards @leechesBleechin opinion that it was probably a concidence.

Think back OP, what else was modified, added or changed both on and off site.

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No its not speed here. We ranked that well last year with subpar Siteground with neiborhood country server (so bad TTFB). Now with TTFB below >50ms with a premium packge with server in our country where 90% of our customers reside. Site scores ~99 / ~80 desktop / mobile on all pages.

It is either the march core update or the 600w scrset product images are the main reference for google and not the href or scr. So basically the product were gone for Google as the image url for the 600w size were gone in the html code of the pages.

I also checked for bad Backlinks, bad reviews and FUD and there is nothing bad out there. Makes no sense tbh, as the only change was the image task in march and you can see on th GSC graphs that this damage started exactly on the 15th.

leechesBleechin said:

Are you sure it wasn't just bad timing? Correlation doesn't always equal causation. Check timings against updates, I imagine there's more to this than just changing to webp. You need to rule everything else out first.

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I'm leaning towards this

Sincerely,
The Data Scientist

Yeah, well as I said I have no clue since it makes no sense. Looking at the protocoll I changed to PHP 8.1 on the 7th of march. Then webP / scrset 700w on the 14th of march. Then no changes till 1th april. The downfall started on the 15th march.

Interstingly but I do not put a lot of weight on it, like all of you do I guess, is that all other Engines (Bing, DuckDuck) ranking did not change at all or improved and we are still Top 1 - 3. So Bing and DuckDuck had no issues with the changes. So the only known variable is Googles Core update which started on the 15th march if the scrset change is not related. But on the other hand like SEOPartner wrote he had also an intial downfall with webp

You can pm me your URL if you like and I'll take a look.

meh… I don’t think webp is the reason. Like someone else said, it is just bad timing. Even your php version has nothing to do with the ranking.

Hello there!
Have you solved this issue? Same on my sites... What CMS and plugin do you use? WP and Yoast?

Sklena said:

Hello there!
Have you solved this issue? Same on my sites... What CMS and plugin do you use? WP and Yoast?

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Hey,

Unfortunately not. The general ranking recovers slowly but the image ranking does not. I did not take the step to get back to the 600px scrset as this is nuts if they do use it as a ranking factor.
It is WP/Woo here. Till March I used SEO Framework for about two 2 years. Then switched to RankMath Pro on April 1th.
If you find some insights, please let us know. My guess it is unfortunate coincidence and the new core update.

tarsonis said:

Hey,

Unfortunately not. The general ranking recovers slowly but the image ranking does not. I did not take the step to get back to the 600px scrset as this is nuts if they do use it as a ranking factor.
It is WP/Woo here. Till March I used SEO Framework for about two 2 years. Then switched to RankMath Pro on April 1th.
If you find some insights, please let us know. My guess it is unfortunate coincidence and the new core update.

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Obviously it is caused by Core Update, my images stopped to rank exactly on 15th March.
Similar sites as mine are not touched even they are using only 300 x 300 px images without any srcset (only img src="").
Do you have images sitemap on your site? That is only difference between my sites and similar one - I haven´t used it until now and thinking about it.

Sklena said:

Obviously it is caused by Core Update, my images stopped to rank exactly on 15th March.
Similar sites as mine are not touched even they are using only 300 x 300 px images without any srcset (only img src="").
Do you have images sitemap on your site? That is only difference between my sites and similar one - I haven´t used it until now and thinking about it.

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Sorry for the late response. Not frequently here and fully overloaded with work. Ok, so somewhat good to know as your situation describes what was happening here. The image impression went down starting on the last peak on 14th March till 22th March by 92% and never recover since then. The images ranked in Top 5 for two years. 1000px and scrset of them in excellent condition with appropriate compression.

Really unfortune that I have done the Webp / scrset switch on that same day where the update rolled out. This messed up getting a clue what is happening.
I'm pretty sure the SEO tools did not generate sitemaps for images I used before. Due to the hit I switched to RankMath Pro and can say that it helps to keep the track of the page. (Deactivated the instant page feature.) It did not help to recover the image impression at all. They are down since then and barley peaked.
Again the main src="", tags or description never changed and just the one main product image srcset resolution changed.

What I'm seeing is that competiors with basic WP themes had a profit in ranking since march not using webp with having subpar pagespeed scores. Even broken meta descriptions showing raw html and old keywords. Really weird. I guess there is more into play here. If you get any news or improvments please keep me updated.

tarsonis said:

Sorry for the late response. Not frequently here and fully overloaded with work. Ok, so somewhat good to know as your situation describes what was happening here. The image impression went down starting on the last peak on 14th March till 22th March by 92% and never recover since then. The images ranked in Top 5 for two years. 1000px and scrset of them in excellent condition with appropriate compression.

Really unfortune that I have done the Webp / scrset switch on that same day where the update rolled out. This messed up getting a clue what is happening.
I'm pretty sure the SEO tools did not generate sitemaps for images I used before. Due to the hit I switched to RankMath Pro and can say that it helps to keep the track of the page. (Deactivated the instant page feature.) It did not help to recover the image impression at all. They are down since then and barley peaked.
Again the main src="", tags or description never changed and just the one main product image srcset resolution changed.

What I'm seeing is that competiors with basic WP themes had a profit in ranking since march not using webp with having subpar pagespeed scores. Even broken meta descriptions showing raw html and old keywords. Really weird. I guess there is more into play here. If you get any news or improvments please keep me updated.

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Yes the serps are a mess, Google is broken so many tweets from know SEO people taking the Mickey out of Google with broken serps, use to be a tweet a month, some are now doing a tweet a day it's just a cluster f...

There is probably more to it than just webp. Do a thorough technical SEO analysis first. Any notable 301/302 redirects?

There has to be something else going on here.

crystalwiz said:

There is probably more to it than just webp. Do a thorough technical SEO analysis first. Any notable 301/302 redirects?

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Basically every webp on wordpress is a redirect from jpg.