Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
nofollow is not a safe way of hiding something from the search engines, and was never intented to be - nofollow is specific to the link it is attached to, not the stuff at the end of the link - if any other links exist (now or in the future), then Google may index that content. And Google will look at the stuff, but will not follow for index purposes.
Think of it as:
nofollow = no counted credit for that link but Google always has its eyes open.
What I figured out so far (with the help of this forum) is that multiple instance photo pages (identical except for the ID of gallery and links to "next/previous" - for navigation purposes) are PROBABLY considered "duplicate":
[webmasterworld.com...]
Can I use *the same image* on a couple of different pages? An image inside A HREF
linking to a "dedicated" (permanent photo) page with the same image? Is this definitely ok, definitely not or a grey area?
What about blogs? Isn't one posting showing up in different categories a "duplicate"?
P.S. My overall issue, as you can tell, is that Google unfairly penalizes (that is to say, ignores), all the great hires photos I have in galleries and is only looking at lowres "inline" images used in articles. This is driving me nuts! It's also quite stupid for Google to do that because they're ignoring good photos and picking up insignificant ones. I've been doing web design for years and never before I had to question every single step to make sure that *Google* likes what I have on the site. Needless to say, I am not their biggest fan right now.
For a start, Google cannot 'see' images; so no matter how beautiful, they may be unfairly ignored, or fairly. Whatever.
Google assesses pictures at least three ways:
1. By the picture file title. elvis.jpg probably figures a tad better than image39998718433.jpg
2. By the ALT text. "Elvis at las vegas" probably tells Google more than "A great pic from jim's great pic gallery"
3. By context. So a pic on a page will usually do better than one in a gallery. Context may include other page factors, like TITLE, meta description, even metakeywords. Who knows for sure? But a better page will get better results.
My pictures, perfectly fairly, do quite well ;)
Up until last week, when on recommendation of this forum I got rid of galleries, in effect saying "screw my users, looks like I'm working for Google anyway", they DIDN'T EVEN SEND GOOGLEBOT to check them out!
My goal-minimum is to make Googlebot see all of my images. Luckily, as I said, after your guys' recommendation, I got rid of gallery functionality and yoo-hoo!... A few were finally downloaded by Googlebot-Image.
Now, I want to make sure I am not violating any other arbitrary "rules" of the "game" - like the one with galleries. Hence, my question is: where can I find the most comprehensive definition of "duplicate content"? Potentially everywhere you see the same sentence (or image) can be considered duplicate. Example: blog entries in different categories. So, where do our overlords draw the line?
Are thumbnails linking to photo pages ok? (I hope so) What about a photo href'ed to its own dedicated page? (In other words, a thumbnail that's the same size as the photo itself)
P.S. Sorry for my acrimonious sarcasm.
So if your site has 30 pages of pictures - same navigation, same headers, same footers and promos - and the images are 'invisible', then Google may see 30 pages with less than 5% of their content (see source, not visible page) being different.
To Google's eye, that is probably the same page 30 times.
But if someone steals your pictures, places them on their site, the pages may look very similar - but look at the code - different headers, footers, promos and navigation; to Google, different pages.
So it's all about code, not what you and I see; and it's about a percentage of the page being unique enough for google to see A New Page.
Downside - it doesn't seem to be a fixed percentage; quality of ALT, legends, even anchor text may reduce the uniquity requirement. Something does, put it that way!
That's why dynamic sites get hit hard; using a large template with small inserts is asking for trouble. Image sites get hit hard because human beings can't see that to Google, a huge image is still dzgzdtz.jpg. It's the text that works the magic.
