JPEG XL isn't supported by Google Images or Discover, Google says

JPEG XL images aren't supported in Google Images or in Google Discover previews, a Google employee said on Bluesky on 15 October 2026. Search Engine Roundtable reported it on 23 October. Anyone who wants .jxl files to appear in either place is affected, and Google's documentation lists the formats Google Search does support.

What changed

The Bluesky post was short. If you want images to appear in Google Images or as previews in Discover, it said, JPEG XL isn't supported at the moment, and it linked to Google Search Central's page on image SEO. That page puts the list plainly: "Google Search supports images referenced in the src attribute of img in the following file formats: BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG, and AVIF." JPEG XL, the .jxl format defined by ISO/IEC 18181, is missing from it.

Google's page also explains how it finds images in the first place. It reads the src attribute of the img element, including an img nested inside a picture element, and it doesn't index images set in CSS. The page presents picture as a way to use new formats while falling back gracefully for clients that can't handle them yet. It asks for an img with a src attribute as that fallback, because not every browser or crawler understands picture or srcset. And it suggests that a file's extension should match its type.

On 23 October, a second post quoted in the Search Engine Roundtable article said a filetype search for jxl in Google Images shows some .jxl files indexed, mixed in with images in other formats. Google's documentation still leaves JPEG XL off its list of supported formats.

What it means for South African businesses

For South African sites, this means a quick look at the format your images actually arrive in. Google's documentation doesn't name South Africa or any other country, and its format list is written for Google Search in general, so we'd treat it as applying here. The sites with most at stake are the ones whose photos do the selling: product shots for ecommerce stores, rooms for a guesthouse in Knysna, plates for a restaurant hoping to turn up in someone's Discover feed. If those photos are .jxl files in the img src, the documentation gives you no reason to expect them in Google Images.

Our view: JPEG XL can stay where it helps your visitors, as long as the img src carries a format on Google's list. Google's own page suggests the picture element for exactly this. Don't plan around the .jxl files that turn up in a filetype search, either. Some indexed files don't amount to support, and the Google employee's post was clear about where things stood. Image formats are a build decision, so this sits with whoever handles your website design and development more than with your SEO reports.

What to do now

1. Pick a handful of pages that matter, such as your home page, your best-selling product or service pages and a recent blog post. Open each one in Chrome, press Ctrl+U to view the source, and search it for .jxl. Google reads images from the img src attribute, so a .jxl file listed only in a source element, with a JPEG, PNG, WebP or AVIF file in the img src, already leaves Google a format it supports.
2. Where the img src is a .jxl file on a page whose photos you want in Google Images or Discover, save a copy of that image as WebP, AVIF or JPEG, give it the extension that matches its format, upload it and put it in the src. To keep JPEG XL for browsers that handle it, list the .jxl in a source element inside picture, with its type set to image/jxl, the way Google's picture example sets a type on each source, and the new file as the img fallback. Reload the page to check the photo still appears, and keep the .jxl file on the server while any page still uses it.
3. While the source is open, check that the photos you want found sit in img elements. Google doesn't index images set in CSS, so a hero photo or product shot loaded as a background image won't be indexed, whatever its format. Ask your developer to move the ones that matter into img tags with alt text, and to check the layout on a phone afterwards.
4. Search Google Images for site: followed by your domain, for example site:yourbusiness.co.za, to see which of your images Google shows today. Note any you expected and can't find, and run the same search again a month after your changes. If the list of fixes runs long, our website design prices show what a new build costs.

Sources

• JPEG XL Image Format Not Supported By Google Images & Google Discover, Search Engine Roundtable, 23 October 2026
• Google image SEO best practices, Google Search Central, 2 March 2026