Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Just checked right now and that number is down to 27%. We seem to have disappeared from a lot of image searches and our traffic is about a third of what it was.
Our site provides entertainment news and ORIGINAL red carpet photos that we take at various events.
On the web search side, we recently bounced back to a top 10 position on searches for the Academy Awards after months in the boonies. Is there a major upheaval/indexing going on with the image search side of Google right now?
Thanks for any insight.
Why are folks worrying about traffic that doesn't convert?
Image search converts very well for me. Maybe it depends on what the picture is, and perhaps the reason why people are searching for it.
I suppose that I should start checking different G servers but it isn't a critical issue for me and I do have a life as well as a web site.
This is the code for an image that appears (currently) on page one of G's search results for a search in my niche. Let's say the search was for "firstname lastname".
<td><a href="/media/images/2005/08/322971.jpg">
<img src="/icon/2005/08/322971.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="199"></a>
</td>
there is no mention at all of "firstname lastname", so how did G decide that this particular image was relevent?
mods, I hope this reference is sufficiently obscure. If not, please accept my apology, but I am trying to get some kind of answers here.
I'm worried because our revenue is currently down two thirds. The people looking for images of actors, etc., would go on to read their bios, news, and our awards and festival coverage.
there is no mention at all of "firstname lastname"
Is there any mention of firstnamelastname on the web page at all?
"firstname lastname" appears on the page a couple of times as text and a couple of times as links.
the problem is that the image is not one of "firstname lastname". So I think G just guessed, but that seems odd, because there are thousands of other pages where the "guess" would have been right. Why this particular page?
The image algo is less filtered/processed than the regular search algo. For instance, last month I was researching a specific Latin American wrestler from the seventies and couldn't find a thing through regular Google. Only when I did an image search did I find a website featuring this wrestler.
However, looking over this brand new set of image serps, it seems like perhaps they tweaked the results to include MORE pics that don't have the keywords in alt tags or in the image file name, but to look for proximity or folder name. This is resulting in what seems like worse results because I'm finding what seems like more images that are not relevant.
Try doing searches for celebrity babies (celebrity name baby) and I think you'll see what I mean. Seems like more emphasis on surrounding text (though folder name still seems to help).
I don't study this too closely though, I could be mistaken. It could jsut as well be more webmasters spamming irrelevant pics into image search. Time to tighten up the image algo?
You're right about the folder thing too, I think. Seems that might help in text searches as well. Can you confirm or deny?
OUCH
What's also changed, is that while the number of our photos found in a site:mysite.com search has gone down, the same search brings an increased number of shots people have placed in their blogs or myspace pages.
It's really, really weird how this has changed in less than a week.
From a semantic web point of view, has google ever suggested the best ways to mark up photo pages, e.g. caption id's etc?
For the keyword I've followed most closely for the last say five years I've managed to rank number one usually for the index.html of the subdirectory dealing with that keyword, but not in Image Search. A long long time ago there was no image on the frontpage though the site itself contains hundreds. I added a php script to randomly display an image on my front page chosen from a subset chosen by me. Unfortunatly the name of the image was at first some random string from iPhoto and even after correcting that, the image name would be rendered irrelevent to search engines due to the php script. The script which I didn't create seems to obfuscate the filename.
Now I rank on the front page for that keyword with whatever random image Google happens to pick up from the php script and my ranking recently increased 15 places or whatever I posted about earlier. This is pure algorithm change as I haven't altered the page or the images...
As for .jpg versus .gif I think this is a technical issue and not an algorithm issue. For pictures of people or places a .jpg should produce a better picture at a lower filesize for most cases. For solid color, ie drawn or created images, a .gif should yield a lower file size. I'd hazzard for most things people are searching for they are using keywords that return a person, place, or thing and are getting a photo of it rather than a drawing. I think .jpgs are as a result much more prevalent. Google could take advantage of this assumption and devalue .gifs thinking they are navigational or decorative while increasing the value of .jpgs thinking they are the product shot, or view of the beach, or picture of the celebrity or whatever it is people are searching for.
Now I must have my shower. I've actually been taking a lot closer look at Google and Yahoo image search over the last two years. I've seen a lot more traffic from image search and as for whether it converts, that assumes I'm actually selling something...
Muskie
So, a photo on our site can be reached two or three ways:
1) the actual event: /fest/afilmfestival/day1/photos/1
2) a galleries section that put all of our photos galleries under one roof: /gallery/78/123/1
3) if the person has a celebrity profile: /bios/heidiklum/photos/1
[Moderators: PLEASE NOTE that these urls are generic and fictional and don't match actual urls on our site...hope that's an okay way not to break the URL posting rule]
All three URLS would have a similar title, H1, and caption, say:
"Heidi Klum at the Webmasterworld Awards Dinner"
Would it be beneficial to block the imagebot from visiting two of those three URLs so google only spiders the image once?
yesterday I see ( for the first time ever ) that google indexed 3500 images from our site, using the site: command.
Checking out the searchterms, they show up on quite a lot of first pages. nice indeed.
Today I wanted to analyze why and how these images were ranking, and why others are not.... and all the images are gone,
none present in the index using the site: command and therefore none ranks for a search term, anyone some thoughts on this one?
Okay, a few days after the drop in numbers began, the site:oursite.com search picked out about 371 images...today that numbers DOWN to 53 images, but all references to our images from Myspace and other blogs appear to be gone.
My main concern is not really that the images were removed from the index as this makes sense to do with stale data but rather by what criteria the images are being removed. I still see images in the index showing up that dont even exist in the original location. Maybe these will be removed soon as well. I am hoping that once the image bot makes its rounds again my site will get indexed again. But seeing as how it took 3 months to get in the index I dont see it happening any time soon.
From what I've seen I always presumed the index is 'static' until an update, i.e. images aren't added on a regular basis. So the one thing I'm concerned about is the lag between when images are spidered and when they appear in the index.
What I mean is - I could reoptimise my images after the update, but perhaps Google hasn't even seen my last image optimisation because they spidered my images months ago. If this is the case then it makes it much harder to evaluate if you're optimisation is working and if it's even the right thing to do :/
What is anyone's prognosis on this? Too soon to tell what's really happening so don't jump to any rash conclusions? A temporary thing that could reverse itself? Or is this it? Kiss all of that glorious traffic goodbye?
Simply crazy.
It's a very "interesting" update to go through. Besides losing listings for over 4,000 ORIGINAL (stress on original) photos, the bizarre thing I find is that of the 371 images listed in a site:mysite search there are results for MySpace and Livejournal entries that hotlink to our images but can't display them due to our hotlinking protection. So they'll get the listing for one of our red carpet photos while we're out in the cold.
Bizarre...
I talked to someone on the images team, and there was an images update recently. One of the last data centers switched over last weekend, so that may be what some of the people here are seeing.
Does that mean the changes are permanent?
1. Pick relevant keywords for your images
2. Set relevant alt tags for your images
3. Do not use dynamic PHP image scripts. If you must then use mod rewrite to show friendly URLs.
4. Check your robots.txt for accuracy
5. Make sure your image path directory depth is minimal
6. Set your image sizes correctly. It seems that larger images tend to show up first in the search.
7. Post relevant content with your images.
8. Cross your fingers
I would assume that since they just did an update they should be sendig the image bot soon (purely speculation). If anyone has any other ideas please share. I think everyone is feeling the pain of this update.
After losing 2/3 of our revenue with this update, I realize I'd much rather grow a dedicated group of visitors who bookmark and visit us daily. Build up a group of people like that and the "results" money from Google Image visitors can be icing, not the cake.
the bizarre thing I find is that of the 371 images listed in a site:mysite search there are results for MySpace and Livejournal entries that hotlink to our images but can't display them due to our hotlinking protection.
I have a similar issue, i had two images that were very relevant to what people were searching for. Both of which were the best examples by far in the search results. One hovered in the top 3 and the other somewhere down the line around 100.
The one in the top 3 was hot linked too extensively, I too have hot-linking disabled except for google and other image searches. Since about the 5th the one in the top 3 is gone, no where to be found. The other one down around 100 is still in approximately the same place.....
It seems the only one affected is the one that was hot-linked too.
Why are hotlinkers being represented in the Image search results? There's nothing more insulting to me than seeing one of my original photos in a site:mysite search as if it came from a xanga or myspace page. It's pretty insulting to click on that image and see"Below is the image in its original context on the page" when it's not even being pulled from that site. And it's comical because it's not even visible on that page due to our hotlinking protection.
Why are hotlinkers being represented in the Image search results? There's nothing more insulting to me than seeing one of my original photos in a site:mysite search as if it came from a xanga or myspace page.
Yup-- I'm having the same problem. Many of the images from my site appear in GI from hotlinked sites, particularly MySpace. :-(
Has anyone heard what caused the massive clearing out of thousands of photos? Will we ever see them return?
Thanks.
