How does one "hack" Google Images results for company name?

[rollinj]

I've had a strange request from one of my clients.

They aren't happy with the images that Google displays when their company name is searched on Google Images.

Why somebody would be searching for images of their company, I have no idea.

The client is always right however, and they want the results of "their" Google Images search results to be "updated" to newer images.

The only thing I can think of is to go wild on social media by posting all of their new images with company-keyword-heavy descriptive text.

Does anyone else have any experience doing something like this?

[aristotle]

If the images are on high-ranking pages in the main google SERPs for the same keywords, they might get an extra boost from their association with those pages.

[lucy24]

they want the results of "their" Google Images search results to be "updated" to newer images

Oh, lordy, that sounds like the beginning of a story on "clients from hell" or similar venue. What do you mean, you don't control The Google?

Do the images that come up in search actually occur on the client's own site, or do they reflect other people's impression of the business? In the short term, I guess you could replace your images with new, improved ones using the identical name and (pixel) size. Or rewrite when the referer is ...

No, wouldn't work. You'd aggravate both the humans and the search engine. (In a small way, I do know the feeling, though: Why does the search engine consistently respond to suchandsuch query with this one particular crummy little image, when I've got a much bigger and better image on the same site answering the same question in a far better way? Grrr.)

[RedBar]

Why somebody would be searching for images of their company, I have no idea.

Because for some industries, mine for instance, the potential new client's contact may be through an image search therefore it is important to have high quality, product representative images as well as loads of the important and relevant technical and descriptive text.

The client is always right however, and they want the results of "their" Google Images search results to be "updated" to newer images.

That's well-easy for me to do since I built my own CMS, a CMS like WordPress could be a nightmare though since you'd have to find every year, month and folder for every image!

Does anyone else have any experience doing something like this?

I was just about to post "Yeah, 21 years", oooops, "Yeah, 22 years" :-)

[tangor]

The client is always right however, and they want the results of "their" Google Images search results to be "updated" to newer images.

I had something like this a few months back. Client wanted me to make all the "bad pics" go away and use the official ones. I paused a moment then asked:

"How much do you generate each year?"

"Mil five, thereabouts."

"Ask me again when you're 10 times that. You're small fry to google."

Then suggested they get cracking on their FB presence and go from there. (I wasn't part of that team). This thread reminds me to ask the client how that is going.

[keyplyr]

How does one "hack" Google Images results for company name?

1. Use the preferred image (at least 200x200px) as the profile image at Google My Business & Google+. If the client does not have these accounts, all the better, create them and wait a week. You may need to return a mailed verification to confirm the business address. That image (displayed at the top on the About page) should also become the image displayed at Google Maps & Google Image Search. This also gives the business placement in local search, displaying that preferred image.

- For the Full Monty -
(these take longer to implement)

2. Create a Bing Business Portal page (using that preferred image.)

3. Create a Yelp Business page (using that preferred image.)

4. Create a Facebook Verified Business page (using that preferred image)

5. Also, when the page is shared at FB and various other Social Media sites, you can control which image is used by including this Meta Tag in the HEAD of the web page:

<meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/image.jpg">

For older browsers:

<link rel="image_src" href="http://example.com/image.jpg">

(It's OK to include both the above tags)

6. Then force that image into the FB image cache with this tool: [developers.facebook.com...]

Note: The server will need to allow the FB image retriever: facebookexternalhit

[keyplyr]

(almost forgot)

7. Client's company web page should use company name in Meta Title tag in HEAD (the page title) as well as displayed on the web page using <H1> tag along with other contact information. The preferred image should be positioned close to that info (in the mark-up) and include the company name in the image tag alt="" attribute.

[lucy24]

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I'll be darned. (But don't forget FB's sister UA, "visionutils". I think that's the one that fetches the image on follow-up visits after the human user has made their original selection.)

If you add the suggested metas, does that mean FB doesn't ask their user to pick an image, but instead proceeds directly to the one you've pre-selected?

Tangentially: are you suggesting that the Bing and Yelp and so on could conceivably affect Google's own results, or is this just for the sake of completeness?

[keyplyr]

Completeness, correct... but also to control other contributing factors. Google Image Search includes images that other important business related sites associate with the business.

And yes, FB's visionutils that comes 'round later. Thanks for the reminder. I'd forgotten that one :)