This resource is intended to help you find and manage the fallback image for your site.
What is a fallback image?
A fallback image is a custom image created by our designers and uploaded to your site as part of our pre-launch SEO work. This is the image that will appear when you share one of your site’s pages on social media, and next to your site’s pages in mobile search results, IF you haven’t set a featured image for those pages.
Why do I need a fallback image?
We add this for you because otherwise search engines and social media apps will choose another image from the page to display. This might be the first image on the page, or another image from the page that fits the parameters. You would have no control over what each tool displays.
The order in which a search engine or social media app will take instruction for which image to show is as follows:
- A custom social sharing image set in Yoast
- A featured image
- A fallback image
- A random image from the page
And if you add a featured image down the road, it can take months for Google to update this in its search results. With a fallback image, at least you have an attractive, branded custom image as a placeholder until you choose something else.
How can I find the fallback image?
You can find your fallback image by navigating in the lefthand menu to Yoast SEO > Settings > Site Basics. Here’s a demo video.
How can I set a custom image per page?
You can set a different image for each page (and article or other type of post) using the WordPress featured image. Here’s a demo video.
What if I want a custom image just for social media?
You can do that via Yoast, too. Locate the Yoast SEO box on any page or post, open the Social tab, and set a custom image. Here’s a demo video.
