SEO for Google Image Search?

[Travis]

I was wondering if there are some kind of good practices (no black or gray hats) to try to improve the ranking of images at Google Image Search ?

I know that lot will say this is waste of time, because Google "steals" the images, and barely no one will visit the site, since they can see the image directly at Google. But still I'd like to see if there are things which can be done to improve ranking.

Often I see "my" images, with "my" URL , but at someone else page, ranking higher than my own page. I do not understand why. At first I thought it was a matter of context, the text around the image and things like that. But I doubt, since often, these pages which are ranking above me (with my image, that they are not even hosting themselves) are just galleries of photos, without text. Sometimes, it's even random photos, without anything in common.

[keyplyr]

I posted a way to avoid thumbnails and keep the full size image on the page so it indexes along with alt & title tags to get the appropriate link text: [webmasterworld.com...]

[lucy24]

my image, that they are not even hosting themselves

Why do you let them? Even if you don’t personally mind other people using your stuff, hotlinking makes for a terrible user experience.

[keyplyr]

You could try using an anti-hotlinking line of code in you /images/ directory that instead serves remote sites a different image, one they may not like.

[Travis]

Why do you let them? Even if you don’t personally mind other people using your stuff, hotlinking makes for a terrible user experience.

You could try using an anti-hotlinking line of code in you /images/ directory that instead serves remote sites a different image, one they may not like.

I am already doing this, but this is not changing anything :

1- these sites do not mind, here I am talking of those sites with page automatically generated. The owners certainly doe not even know what they are showing at their sites, and so won't mind if I serve something else to their visitors. (and it's pointless to write these owners , their host, or even domain registrar)

2- Google Image Bot will still index "my" image no matter if the are hot linked or not, and no matter if I serve something different when hot linked, since Google bot will still see the right image. Excepting if you know of a way to tell Google image bot which is the authorized page to display the image.

[keyplyr]

Sounds like its those guys in S. E. Asia that have image gallery pages mirrored to endless domains.

I went through that. Every 2 or 3 days the hotlink came from a new domain for the same files.

I ended up replacing all those files with 1x1 clear gifs (even the jpg) and moving the real files. Since the perps really don't look at their pages, they've been hot-linking to clear gif files for over 6 months now.

The Google Image Search files once again have my site tagged for the source.

[Travis]

The Google Image Search files once again have my site tagged for the source.

How do you do that?

Or may be you mean adding a watermark / text on each image.

I wish there was a server header field we can add to image, to mention which sites are authorized to display it. This could be used by web browsers, and also crawlers.

[keyplyr]

The images Google had, hotlinked by the guys in Asia and tagged with their URL, was dropped from Google's Image Search results because when it updated, it was now a clear gif which will get purged automatically.

Now my images are indexed with all the appropriate info (title, topic, URL) because of what I have on my page and the way I serve the image to the user.

[Travis]

Ok.

[Travis]

I wonder if any of the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) headers, can be used to tell that an image can be only accessed from a given domain. I know , it's the other way around, but I wonder if there is a trick :)

Also, if the same image (same url) appears at different sites, does it help the image (itself) to gain "authority", like when a page is linked from other sites.

[keyplyr]

No it doesn't do that.

[OnlyOne]

Also, if the same image (same url) appears at different sites, does it help the image (itself) to gain "authority", like when a page is linked from other sites.

Having seen many of my images perform well after being hotlinked and copied across a wide range of domains, I always felt this was the case. However, this affect seems to have been toned down a lot in the last few months. Or, perhaps it is the case that these links have aged and no longer have the same credibility. At one stage, to take advantage of all the hotlinking, I had the images redirecting to the webpage that the jpeg was embedded on.

Something has changed in the last couple of months! For some galleries, I used to have 6 or 7 images that were stayers on the first two to three rows. Now, it is typically only one on every alternate row. Image search feels much more dynamic than what it used to be.

[keyplyr]

Hello OnlyOne and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Also, if the same image (same url) appears at different sites, does it help the image (itself) to gain "authority", like when a page is linked from other sites.

I have not seen this happen. I see only negative implications from any type of hotlinking. Besides the copyright violations, IMO most sites that would engage in hotlinking schemas are not the type I want associated with my site.

[Travis]

There is something else I observe too. Authoritative sites, in their articles, are sometimes linking some words to images at my site. They do not show the image themselves, but they add a link to it (not to the page).

Like for example, " .... in <a href="[my site/image.jpg]" target=_blank">a red house</a> .... (silly example, I know :))

Does it help, hurt, or do nothing ?

Also, is there an advantage or not to add images URLs to the sitemap, whereas they are all already embed at least once at page of my site, page which is already listed in the sitemap?