Google Search Bug Causes Images on 'Top Stories' to Disappear, Sparks Major Concerns Among Users

Google confirmed reports on Wednesday that images on their "Top Stories" panel wouldn't show. This sparked major concerns among users who wanted to read new stories and publishing websites that might have lost some traffic.

Many developers monitor and fix web bugs that regularly appear in their systems. Unfortunately, Google workers might have missed one, which escalated to a global concern.

Multiple complaints flooded Twitter about having trouble loading the feature image in Google's Top Stories carousel.

Twitter Reactions to Google Search Bug: Images on 'Top Stories' Disappeared

SEO expert Soni Sharma said that the Google new carousel problem appeared for both desktop and mobile devices. Notably, the pictures don't load and are visibly replaced by solid-colored boxes.

In Rudra Kasturi's tweet, the Google bug showed different types of problems. Some images are loaded, others are solid-colored boxes, and others are half blurred or censored. The user said that the bug seemed to be linked to specific keywords.

Amber Jones also tweeted image problems with top stories on the carousel.

User Dinesh Kumar posted the same problem. However, he also said that "This is seen across all the Publishers. Is it another Google bug? Coincidentally there is a Google Discover traffic drop happening from yesterday. And we know Discover loves images."

The Google image issue is confirmed to be a widespread bug that readers have encountered globally.

Google Top Stories: Image Bug Problems

John Mueller, the Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, confirmed that the issue was happening "on their side." The company's developer quickly worked to correct the bug immediately after the reveal.

Search Engine Land emphasized that blurred feature images negatively affect clickthrough rate. It is important to note that many Google carousel top stories feature news articles with eye-catching thumbnail images that professionals have taken from the field. The lack of images usually dissuades readers from getting interested in clicking the website.

This is a serious blow to professionals or web pages that are sensitive to visibility and online traffic. These two groups often get their advertising revenue by marketing their websites through those images, and the bug was directly harming their industry.

Fortunately, Google seemed aware of the issue. Google SearchLiason, the company's official Twitter account for public liaison of search, tweeted: "We are working to fix a bug that is causing some images in Top Stories on Google Search results not to render properly."

Google does not elaborate on the nature of this bug, so the impact of this issue is undetermined.

As of time of writing, Google seemed to have finished its fix with the top stories image carousel bug. A quick search showed that the images were loading properly over the stories' thumbnail.

Details for the fix are scant. It is undetermined if all servers across the world have also received their fix. However, the change should happen within the next few hours. For users who still encounter the problem, it is recommended that your refresh the page immediately to load the images.