In the SEO community, there's speculation that Google Image Search has started downranking AI-generated images in favor of traditional ones. Zack Notes highlighted a significant drop in image traffic for his AI-generated images from his game, Animal Matchup, suggesting a new quality metric might be in play from Google. He noted similar reports from other AI image sites. Kane Jamison added that he observed multiple updates to Google Images that seem to target AI images, raising concerns about user experience and content quality in search results.
Yes Google has had multiple Google Images updates since the fall that appear to be AI-image related. I've seen a few SERPs where there's nothing good to replace them.
The chart below shows Web vs Image for our video game Animal Matchup, and the image traffic just took a big hit. I believe that Google put a hit out on AI images.
I've since received DMs from others with AI image sites. They had drops on the same date.
I understand why they want AI images out of other image SERP types.
Collection
[
|
...
]