Rumours across the SEO (search engine optimisation) community have suggested that Google may be positioning AI (artificial intelligence)-generated images lower than traditional images in their image search rankings.
Website owners have been reporting noticeable drops in traffic to their AI-generated images, which has sparked speculation regarding a possible change in Google’s image ranking criteria that would cause AI-generated images to rank lower than before.
Google has not confirmed any changes; however, it is thought that this may be attributed to an algorithm update aimed at improving the quality of images shown to search engine users.
One example of this comes from Zack Notes, who wrote on LinkedIn about a sudden drop in traffic from Google Image Search to his website at the end of January 2025, despite a rise in overall web traffic.
Supported by a screenshot of Google Search Console data, Notes highlighted the image traffic to his site, which specifically comes from AI-generated images, had experienced a sudden and significant decrease.
He explained:
“We haven’t made any site-level changes to the images, we don’t have any new technical issues, and the web traffic is relatively steady. This leads me to believe that Google put a hit out on AI images.”
In an update to his LinkedIn post, Notes shared that after publishing his initial findings, he had received several direct messages from other website owners that use AI-generated images, explaining that they had experienced a similar decline in image traffic on the same day.
The sheer number of these reports suggests that this may not be a one-off issue, but instead, the result of a Google Image Search algorithm change that gives priority to high-quality and relevant images that provides users with the most helpful material.
Looking for some assistance with improving the visibility of your website in Google? Reach out to the team at Engage Web today.
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