Is the image featured in SERP counted as an organic position?

[andreicomoti]

Hello,

Is the image featured in SERP counted as an organic position? For example, on one of my keywords, the results are as described below:

1. Ads (paid)
2. Images (organic - with four rows)
3. Website link (organic)
4. Website link (organic
And so forth...

The image snippet contains 4 rows of images, and after the snippet I see my website. I have checked my position in GSC and it says position 4.1 on average on the last 7 days, but my website is right after the image snippet, so I think it is on position 1.

Does google view the snippet as position 1?

[NickMNS]

There is no way to know for sure if the images count as position 1. What about knowledge graph, people also asked, related searches, videos, etc...? But I don't think it really matters in term of GSC because the values shown are a relative measure that only really serve to compare the performance between your own pages.

To be clear GSC provides the rank of the page given that the page appeared in the SERP related to the keyword. Whereas external SEO services attempt (and most likely or often fail) at providing you with the rank for all searches related to the keyword.

What's the difference?
If there are 100 searches for "Widget" and because of personalization your website only appears 10 times, and each of those 10 times your site appears in the 2nd place, your rank according to GSC is 2. Whereas, for an external service your rank would be... I'm not really sure how they would handle the fact that you don't appear, but it would 2, 10 times out 100 and 0 90 times out 100, so some number that is far worse than 2.

Which of the two methods is correct?
IMO neither, although GSC's rankings are consistent, in that it is always measured on the same basis. The problem is that your site may be seen 10 x out of 100 or 10 x out of 1000 and you wouldn't be able to see the difference*. In terms of the 3rd party services, one must ask should you really be counted for all 100 searches of the keyword, what if the users searching was in another country that you don't serve, or some other factor? The problem is that 3rd parties have no way of determining this as Google doesn't share that information. Also, to determine a rank the 3rd parties are constantly polling Google with searches, but there is no guarantee that the search parameters, in terms of personalization, of the 3rd party bot is representative of your audience. What's worse, is that for you the user there is no way of knowing whether or not the 3rd party results are representative.

So with that said, it makes no difference if the images are counted as position 1 or not. What matters is that your Blue Widget pages, with a score 4.1 ranks better than your Red Widget Page with a score of 5.7.

* You can have clue, of the difference, by looking at the impressions number. But here again, you can only see the change for your site over time, so the information remains incomplete.

[JS_Harris]

- Yes, if your image ranks in the top few images and Google's textual web search results page shows the "images" bar with 4-5 thumbnails, and your image is in there, then yes this will count as a result.