How to display an image in google search result

Question

I managed to do it with my blog like this:

by using google+ (found it somewhere on the web):

<link rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/115170983146246266025/"/>

UPDATE:

This is the way to display the "author" image, but what I want to do is display something like "product image", for example, for a food-blog, I'd like each recipe (post) to display the dish-image next to the search result. I've got the feeling that there's a more generic way of doing it which doesn't rely on having a Google+ account. Any ideas ?

UPDATE 2:

I added an example to what I meant in the answers section.

Answer 1

According to Google

If Google understands the content on your pages, we can create rich snippets—detailed information intended to help users with specific queries. For example, the snippet for a restaurant might show the average review and price range; the snippet for a recipe page might show the total preparation time, a photo, and the recipe’s review rating; and the snippet for a music album could list songs along with a link to play each song.

But Google doesn't guarantee showing rich snippets in your result. Additionally, you can check this link for more information on rich snippets

Answer to the question about authorship image, kept as some might find it useful

Nope, you need to have a Google+ account in order for your image to show with search results for content you have authored. According to this google support article there are two ways to do this -

1. The way you did it - Linking directly to your google+ profile
2. If you have an email id for the domain the content is posted on, like in your case [email protected], you can add that email to your authorship page and have a byline identifying your as the author(eg. By Alfasin) somewhere in the article.

But the prerequisite is that you have an Google+ profile, without that you can't have your picture shown in search results next to your content.

Answer 2

Okay, I found a good example:

And I suspect that this is how it's done:

but I'm not sure yet. I'll test it and if it works - I'll update my answer here (it might take 2-3 days before Google re-crawl my website).

UPDATE:

Didn't work for me, my guess is that the website itself needs more authority before Google picks up the "product image" as well as the author image. I'll try to send this question to Matt Cutts.