Google Image update, January 2009

[zeus]

Its that time again, new Images are added to the index, about the filter I can not say if they have loosen up the "moderate filter" so more normal images are show like before last update, maybe we will see something in 1-2 days, but now there is added new images.

[tedster]

Thanks for keeping us tuned in to the Image Search, zeus. You have a lot more attention for this than many of us.

Are you seeing more or fewer images blended into regular search these days? For the terms I watch it seems like fewer.

[zeus]

Thanks tedster - I also see fewer, which I also think is good. About the New update I see many new images added still going on today, but it looks like the "moderate filter" issue they still ignore.
The Problem is so many images are filtered out with this filter on, example you search for new Saturn Images you have to turn off the filter if you want to see all those great Photos.

Now I think Google still have the same problem as they had for years, if many other sites "forums, blogs, sites" are linking directly to your Images, those show up in a Site:yourdomain.com google image search which can be very bad for your site, which also can course to tricker that filter, those other sites can have bad text or images, which is now counted as part of your site.

[zeus]

it looks like still no fix to this "moderate filter" issue so we will still see a lot of images lost in the filter, its sad it has been going on for years and I even dont think its hard to fix.

[mssfldt]

hi zeus,
I have seen the images update too. But today its gone. It seems to me as if the images Update has been reseted.

[zeus]

Yes today we have a little cut back, I thought they where finished, but still there are a few new images on Google.

Im not sure why, I just hope they fix there site: bla bla problem, but it dont look like it.

[mssfldt]

Hi zeus,
I think it was a filter bug. In my eyes this happened:
on 22. Jan google made an images AND filter update. But the filter had a bug. So all of my pictures are only visible in the not-filtered search.

on Jan. 25/26 google reacts and played up a two-weeks-old-backup in the image-index. So on Jan 26 all new pictures are gone, image search and rankings looked like two weeks before.
During the night the google-programmer fixes the problem - or they now use the old filter.
on jan. 27 google shows the new pictures. Now all of my new pictures are also visible in safeSearch.

This is just a theory. As allways there were too less people checking the images-Index to find out something "real & statistical".

Best wishes, Martin

[zeus]

I dont see that much changed to the filter, but I do see less new images in the index, but do look like they are at it again, lets see what happens today and tomorrow.

[dailypress]

< moved from another locations >

So one of my new sites is less than 6 months old and I found out today that Google Image finally index a few images.

Google Image: example.com shows 5 images hosted on my own server and 3 other images hot linked from other sites. I am hoping more and more images to be indexed soon.

My site has over 2000 pictures.

What I find interesting is that the largest photos in terms of dimensions have been indexed first. We will see how it continues to index the rest.

[edited by: tedster at 6:02 pm (utc) on Jan. 31, 2009]

[zeus]

dailypress - it takes time, images updates only every 3 month. Also I have seen today that a lot of new images added are gone today, so something is still happening.

About other sites showing up in a yoursite.com search is not good, could give troubles, I have seen many sites where 90% was hotlinking sites rest was original site.

[mssfldt]

I have a lot of new images in the google Index. I think, there are images indexed, that were uploaded before Nov. 15th 2008.
That means there are images in the index, that are not older than two months. This is the shortest period i have sawn untill now.

Anybody else who noticed? Zeus?

[edited by: tedster at 12:18 am (utc) on Feb. 8, 2009]
[edit reason] moved from another locations [/edit]

[mssfldt]

Hi, thanx for udministration. But I think, its a NEW images Update ;-)
Martin

[tedster]

It's an ongoing Image Search update that began about two weeks ago. Image Search moves at a very different pace from regular text search. The technology on Google's back end is different and more intensive, especially because of Safe Search filtering for images. Image Search is also not as high priority, since text content changes much more often than images do, and regular search gets a lot more traffic, too.

[mssfldt]

Hi tedster,
thanx. But I don't agree. In my eyes the January-Update (jan. 22th) has finished. After a filter-Bug on Jan. 26/27 when google has shown a backup-Version the new Indx was stable (? corect word? i mean it was fix) for about one week. Now I see about 80 new images with a new deadline.
So, as I sayed, I think, its a new update. Perhaps google is now be able to update the images faster. I think, the new filter is better and faster.

[potentialgeek]

Jan. 28, 2009 - Image referral traffic started to climb gradually from average of 100 per day to 500 per day (yesterday) on one of my sites.

The interesting difference perhaps between my site and others is I use zero alt tags. This was kind of a test to see how important alt tags are to get images.google.com traffic. (It was also a deliberate attempt to be conservative with respect to using alt tags for SEO.)

One thing I just noticed about the SERP order for a generic search of my site, i.e: site:example.com, then click on Images, is the largest files show up highest in ranking.

p/g

P.S. Ask.com's image search is funny. I still get traffic to images that were removed five years ago. lol!