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Expose a high-resolution project icon for Google Search result thumbnails #6982

Description

@TheKsenon

Please confirm the following

  • I checked the existing issues for duplicate feature requests.

Area

Modrinth.com website

Problem

Google Search may use an arbitrary project gallery image as the text-result thumbnail instead of the project icon.

Example project: https://modrinth.com/mod/sable-pushable

For the query Sable: Pushable, Google currently shows the unfeatured Settings gallery image as the thumbnail. The green Modrinth favicon on the left is expected because favicons are site-wide; this report concerns the larger result thumbnail on the right.

The project page does specify its icon in og:image, but only as a 96×96 derivative:

https://cdn.modrinth.com/data/owmGz5A4/1cca20eed5bf0bf4e83f8fb55cfb0967f40210be_96.webp

The response also currently has Content-Type: image/jpeg, even though the URL and file contents are WebP. The page does not appear to expose schema.org primaryImageOfPage metadata.

Google documents that text-result image selection is automated, but recommends specifying a preferred representative image using og:image or primaryImageOfPage and using high resolution where possible:
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/google-images#specify-a-preferred-image-with-metadata

Suggested solution

  • Expose a higher-resolution project icon in og:image instead of only the 96×96 derivative.
  • Consider adding primaryImageOfPage structured data pointing to the project icon.
  • Return a Content-Type matching the generated image format.

This cannot guarantee that Google selects the icon, but it would provide a stronger and internally consistent preferred-image signal.

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