Google’s recent announcement about supporting AVIF images in Search marks a significant development that could greatly enhance website performance. It’s an update worth paying attention to.
Google has officially declared that AVIF images are now eligible to appear in Google Search and Google Images, across all platforms that utilize Google Search data. This new support for AVIF is expected to reduce image file sizes substantially, thereby improving Core Web Vitals scores—especially the Largest Contentful Paint (LCP).
How AVIF Can Enhance SEO
Effective SEO begins with getting pages crawled and indexed. Reducing file sizes and accelerating web page rendering speeds can help search crawlers access content more swiftly, leading to a higher number of pages being crawled.
Google’s crawl budget documentation emphasizes that increasing page loading and rendering speeds can prevent “Hostload exceeded” warnings.
The documentation also notes that faster loading times enable Googlebot to crawl more pages on your site, thereby improving crawl efficiency.
What Is AVIF?
AVIF (AVI Image File Format) is a cutting-edge, open-source image format that combines the best features of JPEG, PNG, and GIF while offering more compression, resulting in smaller image files—up to 50% smaller than JPEGs.
AVIF supports transparency like PNG and handles photographic images like JPEG, but with a higher dynamic range, deeper blacks, and superior compression. AVIF also supports animation, similar to GIF.
AVIF Versus WebP
When comparing AVIF to WebP, AVIF generally outperforms WebP in terms of smaller file size (compression) and image quality. However, WebP is better suited for lossless images where maintaining high quality is crucial, regardless of file size. For everyday web use, AVIF is the superior option.
Is AVIF Supported?
AVIF is currently supported by major browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. While not all content management systems support AVIF yet, both WordPress and Joomla do. In terms of CDN, Cloudflare already supports AVIF as well.
At this moment, it’s unclear whether Bing supports AVIF files. This article will be updated once more information is available.
Despite AVIF being used on only 0.2% of websites, its availability in Google Search is likely to increase its adoption. AVIF is expected to become a standard image format, given its high compression rates, which enable websites to perform better than they do with JPEG and PNG formats.
A study conducted in July 2024 by Joost de Valk, founder of Yoast, revealed that not all social media platforms support AVIF. LinkedIn, Mastodon, Slack, and Twitter/X do not currently support AVIF, while Facebook, Pinterest, Threads, and WhatsApp do.
AVIF Images Are Automatically Indexable by Google
According to Google’s announcement, no special actions are required to make AVIF images indexable.
“Over the recent years, AVIF has become one of the most commonly used image formats on the web. We’re happy to announce that AVIF is now a supported file type in Google Search, for Google Images as well as any place that uses images in Google Search. You don’t need to do anything special to have your AVIF files indexed by Google.”
With a passion for uncovering the stories that shape our cities and society, Karthic brings a unique blend of investigative prowess and narrative finesse to New Urban India. Specializing in urban development, social issues, and policy analysis, Karthic delves deep into the complexities of modern India, striving to present comprehensive and insightful perspectives.