New Small Thumbnail Images In Mobile Search Results
As of the summer of 2018, Google has been showing little image thumbnails in mobile local search results.
So if you do a search on a mobile phone for a local service, there is about a 45% chance you will see little images to the right of the organic listings.
below is an image of the images, from Rank Ranger’s blog.
Images Showing For Voice Search & Text Search
The little images show for either voice or text-based local searches.
How Are The Thumbnail Images Chosen?
The images are chosen at random by Google from the website. As of Nov 2018, there is currently no way to control which images get shown as a local result thumbnail in organic search.
Making sure the images on your homepage and pages of the site are marked with good SEO tags, title tags, and file names wouldn’t hurt.
Do Mobile Image Results Get Higher Click Rates?
I’d bet a lot of money on yes, and I believe any SEO professional would agree with me on that. No official studies have yet been made public though.