Is it just me or have they wound the clock back a few years listing the actual site, with a description, underneath?
Also carousel set of shopping images across the top.
JS_Harris
1:25 pm on Sep 19, 2018 (gmt 0)
I see an entire row of text sub-headings on many image searches, the carousel seems limited to shopping and celebrities.
I think they improved the logic behind images. Take "fruit" for example. They know what fruit is and so every image has a wide range of fruit. Where you see a single fruit it seems to be because the person gave the fruit image a name that Google doesn't recognize as fruit. Example, a picture of a single apple under the fruit heading. It's titled "alphabet of fruit"... but alphabet is not a fruit, so being an apple it ranks for fruit where none of the other pictures contain "alphabet fruit". Same with a picture of a nut, it's titled "fruit monkeys" and is on a page with fruit but Google doesn't know what a fruit monkey would be(I don't either) so it's included once.
The image engine seems to strive for diversity on every page much like their question boxes do. In the past they just showed hundreds of images of fruit that it knew were fruit, but now it sneaks in an oddball image if it finds one.
Image of a single lemon, it's titled Fruits. Had it been titled lemon, it's not on the fruits page as there are no other lemons there.
Wrapping your head around this should lead you to rank a whole lot of images for many more terms but who's going to go name their apple pictures "alphabet fruit" etc. I see one guacamole image, but it's titled fruits. I see one watermelon image but it's titled fruits. I see one tomato image but it's titled "is a tomato a fruit or vegetable". To rank for fruit it has to contain the fruit title. To be a single fruit it seems to have to be titled fruit + something else.
You might be able to achieve extra exposure simply by naming your apple pictures "Apple Fruits" instead of just "an apple". It wasn't this pronounced a couple of years ago. If you want a single apple picture to rank for apple name it apple and it will compete for apple but nothing else. If you want to sneak a picture on the same page call it an "alphabet apple" and it will vie for the diversity spot.
JS_Harris
1:36 pm on Sep 19, 2018 (gmt 0)
TL;DR, if you have a picture of an apple titled apple it might be wise to go back and name it "apple - fruits". I'm not saying mislabel it, I'm saying name it accurately and extend the title to describe what it is as well, not just what it's called. "Carburetor - engine parts" or "spark plug - performance part" etc. name + very brief description. "Madonna - rock star" tells Google more than just "Madonna" which also includes "painting" etc. I think they are rewarding that much more strongly now and you'll still rank for Madonna but now also rock stars. Don't abuse it, they'll punish you just as quickly.
Leosghost
3:32 pm on Sep 19, 2018 (gmt 0)
They have dialled back the dominance of pinterest somewhat here..not much, but a little , there are now at least 2 images that are not on pinterest ( ot of 24 images ) in the first page of image search..
RedBar
3:43 pm on Sep 19, 2018 (gmt 0)
I'm seeing some weird results for my widgets, I'll go as far to say that these results are now as bad as Bing and DDG image search, one of my main image sites is down at least 50% so far today.
EditorialGuy
4:01 pm on Sep 19, 2018 (gmt 0)
For informational queries, I'm seeing dozens of images with oval-shaped buttons for related searches across the top of the page.
Google is always testing things, so it's hard to know what's normal and what's not.
