Google image update started Sept 25 - many images went missing

[zeus]

Hmm it looks like they are now ruin the good update for 3-4 month ago, now to many images again gets filtered and a lot of images are lost with "moderate search off".

I had hoped that Google now would keep the good results, they where close to Bing image results, but now they are back on Place two for image search.

Its a shame

[dhaliwal]

yes, i have also seen a major drop in the number of images shown from the website i manage.

also, i have noticed the fluctuation.

[Shrike99]

On September 25th 2009, my indexed images for my 2 main websites (one in French and one in English) went from 2000 images each to 0. I now have about 100 indexed now when using the site: command.

About the same situation as on September 1st 2008 (thread here: [webmasterworld.com...] Zeus, looks like you had some issues at that time also.

In 2008, everything came back to normal 10-14 days later, I hope it will be the same this year.

[dhaliwal]

The results shown are quite different everytime i search using site:mysite.com

but, for sure, there is a huge update going on for Google Image Search. Results aren't that good though.

[michaelj72]

i keep track of the positions of some of the photos on one of my sites and there's been a lot of flucuations the past weeks; but since i haven't really paid much attention to this until lately i'm not really sure if this is normal or something is happening - it seems something of an update/purge/algo tweak may be occurring.

i did lose one of my very nicely ranked pics, sigh, just this past week, perhaps because i added a good number of other photos to the page and site recently, with more surrounding text....

[dhaliwal]

I have noticed a lot of blogspot.com and wordpress.com hosted blogs showing up in image results for some major keywords.

Also, many other big websites have been pushed back during this update.

[piatkow]

For my two major photo galleries I don't see much change. Both do better in Bing for the same searches.

[zeus]

piatkow - Bing is the no.1 for image, BUT they are way behind with there update of new images, there Google is no.1, I also will say this to this update it looks like the "moderate filter on" is OK, its just less images listed on google.

So I think and hope the lost images will get back later this week.

[dhaliwal]

i am also hoping to see more images back in the index. i don't see any reason for them to be dropped.

on the site i manage, the number of pages in google have increased, but in this update for images, the images in google have gone down.

[zeus]

yes, I have now done a test for a lot of different sites with different images, it looks like "moderate filter on" is ok, but images are missing all over, I even think we are talking latest added images in some cases which will be a good thing for us whos missing images, be cause they will be added again, but I dont see any changes today which is not a good sign.

[dhaliwal]

yes, it is showing the same results even today. So, the drop from tomorrow continues.

[norbiu]

I have 300 images left out of 500 indexed (and over 1000 images total on my server). This change cut my traffic by 60% ... What is going on here?

[zeus]

It do look a little wierd this time, a lot of images are missing and no action the last 2-3 days, it almost looks as if they are done. I had hoped that with there new system, where we see new images everyday in the index, that those missing images would come back soon and not like before with every 3 month update.

About lost images, im at 6500 from 14.000, traffic down 50%

[dhaliwal]

i agree to Zeus

we have seen a major drop in image traffic. And, the number of images has dropped.

The ranking for images has also dropped.

I am seeing many wordpress and blogspot hosted blogs coming up.

In addition, i have not noticed any changes, the things are where they were 3 days back. They just decreased the image count and there isn't any flux. These changes look like final now onwards, unless there is another major shift within a week.

[zeus]

with sites I watch it looks like mostly larger images are gone, any have the same

[Tropical Island]

A page with unique images that has been receiving a steady 1000 impressions per day is now down to 100. Almost all references were from Google images. The 100 that are left are coming from links & Yahoo.

[zeus]

Good news guys, I see action on the Image front, more images are added, so watch your sites today.

[dhaliwal]

after 2-3 days of no change, i have also noticed an increase in number of images.

Zeus, have you seen some revival of traffic yet ?

[zeus]

some sites I watch I have nothing to do with so I cant say, just for the research, but some I do work on, have increased traffic again, so we are on the right track, still there are images lost, but could come in 1-3 days

[dhaliwal]

thats a good news then. there is flux, i hope for things to return back to normal.

[vordmeister]

I wonder if there is any logic in there or if it's just a sort around and they haven't got all the images up yet.

I have an iconic image that suits a certain search (I took it - very pleased with myself) and it used to be at the top of image search. Just at the moment I see copies of my image on other sites in the image search but not the original.

My theory - it's all about fresh search. Show the page that stole the image most recently as it's bound to be more relevant and up to date than the original. As opposed to show the earliest record of the image as that's where you might find the photographer and associated info.

[dhaliwal]

Vord, i have also noticed that some images from our website were used by others. Even many of them have our Tag on the image.

They are ranking now on front page.

[zeus]

hmm, I now see less images again and more with filter off, I dont hope they mess with the filter again which have worked pretty good the last 3-4 month, as it looks now they filter 50% of all image on a site which NON is in a filter of Category.

I dont think these results will stay if we talk filter, I think its a flux back to less images, be cause they have a good filter now which works, so why mess with it.

[Shrike99]

Good news: For my 2 websites, about the third of the images are back. As written before on this thread, they were all gone on September 25th. There was about 1/10 yesterday night, 1/6 this morning and now 1/3. Including my most searched one, which bring about 500 visitors a day.

Hopefully, everything will be back to normal in a couple of days. I sure hope I'm right... :-)

[zeus]

I dont think you will ever see any difference in Original and copy in rankings, a image is a image. When i place image on the net I do it with the knowledge that other will maybe copy them, if I want it secure I would place it on https or with login.

[frances]

I watch a few sites that do well in images. And one of them has suffered a lot in the recent changes while the others havn't.

Which got me thinking...

One difference between the sites is that one - the one that has suffered - isn't very strong in Google and its appearance on the first page of google as an image result for some pretty competitive terms was quite surprising.

Those image results have now absolutely disappeared.

The other sites do well in web search as well. They still do - and do do their images.

So I wondered, maybe what we are seeing is Google image search maturing? Being more about "relevancy" and less about alt tags, exact match captions etc?

[zeus]

The ranking in google image is not bad at all i think, if there has been some extent changes there? I would say no, I also see many images are returning now.

[Shrike99]

Just woke up 10 minutes ago, immediately went to the computer to see if more of my images were showing up. Great news, looks like 80% of them are back!

[dhaliwal]

I can also confirm that around 70% of the images are back. Hoping for few more to come and i guess things should be normal.

[maximillianos]

Our traffic for one site (large image based site) shot through the roof the last few days... Well, it doubled.

Now it seems to be tapering back a bit. Darnit. ;-)