Hello,
Thank you for your message.
Yes, the Google Image (scraping) method is currently not working. I am working on a fix to make it available again as soon as possible.
Thank you for your patience.
Thank you for the update. Premium user here who mostly uses that method 😛
Looking forward to the fix!
Hello,
Google has recently strengthened its anti-bot protections, and this is currently affecting the Google Images method.
I have tried several workarounds, but for now I have not found a solution that is reliable enough.
As an alternative, I am considering adding Bing Images as a fallback source whenever Google does not return results.
Would this be a good option for you?
Regards.
Better than nothing! At least until you find a way to keep using the Google method. Thank you so much for working on this!
Hi @mcurly, an update to this… Google Image (Scraping) method definitely isn’t working still. With Bing Images fallback, it was returning images that have nothing to do with the post title or content. In one case, a user even sent an email about an image that really should not have been used. So I had to disable the Bing fallback for now.
Interestingly, Search Based On is set to Title (Full Title) in Automatic settings, with First Result as Image Selection. But when searching the titles on Bing Images, the image used by Magic Post Thumbnail is nowhere to be found. Curious as to what the Bing Images fallback entails, since there isn’t a tab to select options. Where there any filters applied to fallback searches?
Also, since you were using Bing Images as a fallback (even though as it is, it doesn’t work effectively), is there any reason why it wasn’t added to the Image Banks and Banks Settings options created for it?
Hi codings,
Thank you for the feedback.
The Bing Images fallback was only intended as a temporary workaround while I was looking for a reliable solution for Google Images scraping.
Unfortunately, Google scraping no longer seems reliable enough, and I have not found a proper solution so far.
Since Bing was only an emergency fallback, it was not added as a full Image Bank with dedicated settings. Based on your feedback, I agree that it should not be used automatically if the results are not relevant enough.
I am now considering either removing the Google scraping option entirely, or replacing it later with a dedicated Bing Images source if it can be made reliable and configurable.
For now, disabling the Bing fallback is the safest option.
Thanks again.
