It's Official - Looks Like Users Don't Like Google's New Image Search?

Google Image Search Suffers Massive Drop in External Search Numbers

[Brett_Tabke]

[definemg.com...]

We analyzed the image search traffic of 87 domains and found a 63% decrease in image search referrals after Google’s new image search UI was released. Publishers that had previously benefitted the most from their image optimization efforts suffered the greatest losses after the image search update, experiencing declines nearing 80%.

In the eleven weeks after Google’s new image search was released, there has been no recovery – which means for image search, the significantly reduced traffic levels we’re seeing is the new normal. In the aftermath of the new image search experience, image SEO has been severely compromised, and we have no choice but to recommend deprioritizing image SEO when weighed against other search traffic initiatives.

[ColourOfSpring]

Not so sure about "users" here - if users (searchers) respond well to the change then it's a good move on the face of it. HOWEVER, if there's a webmaster backlash to these changes and it becomes common practice to not allow your images to be indexed by Google because there's no advantage to it, then users (searchers) will have a worse experience in the long run. Google should be aware that it's the content people are after - and without content providers, there's no content.

[ken_b]

Based on the article/quote it appears that "users" like the new image search just fine.

Webmasters/publishers are the ones who dislike it.

Personally as a webmaster/publisher I blocked search engines from my image folders some time ago.

[chrisv1963]

My Mozilla Firefox often freezes when I use the new Google Image Search. Thus, as a user I don't like it. As a webmaster I hate it and I already blocked Google => bad experience for some users.

[HuskyPup]

I don't know whether it's just my widgets however the current results are either not updating or are extremely slow these days. I'm getting pages to #1 in the regular SERPs yet the images are nowhere to be found.

If you prefer the old style results they are available with Opera 12.5 browser.

And FWIW as a very regular user of image search I do not like the new layout whatsoever, I find it frustrating and much slower to use and the amount of times I've backed out of a search with my <- is crazy.

Plus you can add my sites to the above statistics. I think I've managed to stop hæmorrhaging on my watermarked sites together with my redirections etc but the older sites with thousands of images and not watermarked are basically burnt toast now.

[treeline]

Looking just at the clickthroughs is inaccurate.

Now when I use google image search, it lets me see the full image right there, so I seldom visit the original site, unless I'm looking for more of the same.

How much I use image search hasn't changed, but how often I click thru has been reduced. A lot.

[Rasputin]

Curious, since G said:

In our tests, we’ve seen a net increase in the average click-through rate to the hosting website.

[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.fr...]

So either their testing was woefully wrong / inadequate or they were being less than honest. Neither possible answer gives us much confidence in G and their SERPS results more generally...

[indyank]

Has G ever said or admitted that a change had resulted in user dislike or bad user experience? AFAIK they have always justified their changes with their positive stats.

It's Official - Users Don't Like Google's New Image Search

what I don't understand is who are we referring to as "users" in the title to this thread? Where does that referral post say that users disliked Google's new image search? My understanding is it says the traffic to sites thro. image search has declined significantly, but not that users don't like them.

Why should users bother about the fact that G is giving them larger, high resolution images thro. a shameless content grabbing act? The reality is most users wouldn't even know how google is giving them all those images for their image search queries. They might not know or might not bother to ponder how unethical G is in what they are doing with others images.

[lucy24]

the amount of times I've backed out of a search with my <- is crazy.

That sounds like something I was trying to figure out in another thread. If you click on View Original Image,* you end up on a screen where the only way out is via the browser's Back button, because it really is just the image in isolation. I can't for the life of me figure out how this translates to a good user experience. That's, er, "user" = the person doing the search, not "user" = the site being searched.


* For today's double-checking I deliberately homed in on an image that was out of copyright (mid-19th-century drawing). So the site lost out but at least the artist himself didn't.

[Bewenched]

a 63% decrease in image search referrals after Google’s new image search UI was released

Well that's because they don't even have to visit your site anymore to steal your images or view your content.

[zeus]

That Google dont tell the truth about there search engine, thats nothing new after they got on the stock market, at that point things changed. As said from the beginning, I recommend ALL website owners to block google image. The sad thing is just that more use the google image, be cause they dont find what they are looking for in the real search. A dr. I know asked me last time, "whats wrong with google, when do they fix there results", I did not understand, what he ment, then he said "well when I make a search I get the same company on the whole first page, no other results". I told him thats the new Google domain stuffing, so you click the ads instead. I then told him about duckduckgo. Thats also a reason why more search on google image.

[arieng]

Of course i can't find the article now, but my understanding was that the huge decline was attributable to the fact that the old interface pre-loaded the page within Google Images. That meant GA code getting triggered as a pageview even though the user hadn't clicked through to the site. The new interface doesn't do that. So while many users are seeing huge declines in their analytics reports, the actual click-throughs to the site could still be higher.

No evidence to back this up myself yet, but working on it.

[bwnbwn]

May I ask a really stupid question here. What is Google? It is a website that provides a service. Right or Wrong? What do YOU do on your website? Allow traffic to just go were they please or do YOU try to make a buck off each visitor. Why do YOU think it is any different, Google does what it needs to do in their best interest and they do it. If YOU can't see the writing on the wall all YOU have to do is "no Index" then it is not an issue with YOU.

[Andem]

I think users may have lost out here. Since many webmasters like myself have completely removed our images from Google image search, users are given less choice. Even though a lot of our stuff has been scraped, we have had many successfully removed via DMCA requests. Any new images posted will never make to the typical image scrapers since they aren't discoverable by Google Images.

There was always an unwritten contract between Google and webmasters where we provide them with content and they provide us with traffic. That contract has been breached and I'd suggest everyone disable access to their images from search engines such as Google.

[skibum]

Google certainly does what is in its best interest regardless of how it affects the rest of the ecosystem on the web. If Google could find a way to be THE web and prevent anyone from ever going to any other website they would probably deem that to be in their interest too. They would still be able to say "This speeds up the experience for users, reduces the load on the source website’s servers, and improves the accuracy of webmaster metrics such as pageviews".

[arutoria]

Google is keeping the traffic on their sites so it looks like the new image search works fine for them (and users). But as webmasters we all lost.

[Lexur]

So the solution is to include in robots.txt something like this. Isn't?

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /resources/
Disallow: /wp-content/uploads/

[bhonda]

Can I suggest the title of this thread is changed? It comes across as official Google-bashing, where the linked report indicates no such thing.

I'm not trying to defend Google here, but I'm tired of so many threads here merely complaining about how bad Google is, and titles like 'It's Official - Looks Like Users Don't Like Google's New Image Search?' just encourages that.

Please can we be a bit more constructive? We're supposed to be professionals.

[ColourOfSpring]

Has G ever said or admitted that a change had resulted in user dislike or bad user experience? AFAIK they have always justified their changes with their positive stats.

Good point indyrank - especially when changes negatively impact webmasters (like this latest Images updates) - who are afterall Google's paymasters and content providers.

[Jez123]

That sounds like something I was trying to figure out in another thread. If you click on View Original Image,* you end up on a screen where the only way out is via the browser's Back button, because it really is just the image in isolation. I can't for the life of me figure out how this translates to a good user experience. That's, er, "user" = the person doing the search, not "user" = the site being searched.

Yes, the whole thing is unnecessarily clunky and definitely moves away from google's usual "clean" approach of serving results as fast and as simply as possible. A definite move to benefit themselves and not the user IMO. A strong case of do as I say and not as I do, I feel!

[viral]

I disallowed Google a long time ago. So I am wondering anyone know if the frame breaker still work? I know they did some html5 test a while ago and the frame breakers didn't work. With the new system is this the case?

[tantalus]

I'm just waiting for the adwords to show up on the image search, anyone care to take a stab as to when?

"So I am wondering anyone know if the frame breaker still work?" No.

Google banned from my images BTW.

"If you click on View Original Image,* you end up on a screen where the only way out is via the browser's Back button"

Just a quick heads up, "view original image" on gooogle uk (using win 7 desktop) takes you to the original image url now, similar to bing.

The only way out is still only via the browser's back button though.

[BaseballGuy]

Google should be aware that it's the content people are after - and without content providers, there's no content.

Until all the content providers ban together to show Google that they are nothing without us....

Google is going to continue to $h!t all over the webmaster, much like a tyrant in a 3rd world country.

[Lame_Wolf]

"So I am wondering anyone know if the frame breaker still work?" No.

It still works under certain circumstances.

[viral]

I'm just waiting for the adwords to show up on the image search, anyone care to take a stab as to when?

They have tested ads on image search from time to time. You will especially run into them when searching for technical stuff like tablet pc's and such like.It isn't a constant thing and it is only because I had a site in the tablet pc niche that I kept seeing them. When you are searching for ideas for articles you spend a bit of time in image search.

[indyank]

Has anyone tried blocking only Google image bot in robots.txt and succeeded in removing the images from Google images? I haven't experimented that yet.

[ken_b]

Has anyone tried blocking only Google image bot in robots.txt ....

I disallowed my image folders in robots.txt. It took a while, but eventually (months) G dropped all my images (several thousand) from image search.

[backdraft7]

While you all may block images, I know of a few big photo spam site with MILLIONS of photos and who just so happen to be G's ad network buddies that are happy to participate. Unless you haven't noticed, photos are the new spam. Google doesn't notice cause apparently it makes them money.

[glitterball]

I believe that Google has stepped over a moral line here - they are actually stealing the content and giving nothing in return to the content creator.

You know, some legislation by the EU that required Google to get opt-ins in order to use any news/images/content would end the monopoly in a heart-beat.

[avalon37]

How can I see image search traffic in Google Analytics? I have seen a decline in organic site traffic for some time now, however I am trying to see if organic traffic has dipped even more since the image search change. Any ideas on how to measure this?