Google Image Search

chuckinsocal

I'm curious why images from our SM galleries won't show up in a Google Image search. I know Andy's gonna say Google will find our images posted in a blog or forum, but I want to know why not in the SM galleries.:dunno

richpepp

chuckinsocal wrote:

I'm curious why images from our SM galleries won't show up in a Google Image search.

For what it's worth it works for me - images directly from our Smugmug galleries DO appear in the Google image search results, BUT - it is very difficult to get them on the first few pages and I have noticed that Google changed something recently so that it seems to pick up the keywords slightly differently from before.

Don't know if that helps

Richard

pilotdave

chuckinsocal wrote:

I'm curious why images from our SM galleries won't show up in a Google Image search. I know Andy's gonna say Google will find our images posted in a blog or forum, but I want to know why not in the SM galleries.

It all has to do with how google decides what it's a picture of. They go by the filename of the image (not the original filename you uploaded, but the filename of the image as it is stored on smugmug) and text immediately adjacent (in the html code) to the image.

Smugmug galleries look good, but unfortunately they are not very compatible with google image search's criteria. I think there are some fairly simple and very complex solutions to problems like this... but there are definitely more important things for the smugmug team to be working on.

Dave

richpepp

...and the change I noticed recently was that Google seems to give higher priority to the description underneath the photo rather than the keywords. I can now easily find my photos by the description (if I have added any) but virtually nothing by the keywords.

Plus it takes a while to get indexed - especially if your photos are buried low down a tree

Rich

chuckinsocal

Thanks Guys,

I know per StatCouter that my car images are regularly found on a regular Google search by my photo captions when someone searches for "57 chevy" or something. But, not by an Image Search . But my images in other galleries never show up, at least not that I've seen. Plus, Google Webmaster Tools says my site has a pretty low page rank so I know I need to work on that. Work, work, work, work work. Does it ever end ?

Thanks again.

shfaya

It looks like we are crazy or something. Each of us is spending probabely tens of hour a week to do the SM look nice and work perfectly. at the begining we were told to put a keywords so i typed ten of them on each photo, later that filename is important, so I started to name the files exactly like keywords, and now we are being told it is description that is important.
I can see just by typing whatever, like for egzample "white horse" that google picks up first hundreds of photos with a white horse in the name and then maby it will pick few photos with a keywords "white horse".
It was said that pasting the photos to the blog will help google to find these photos. Should i send all off them (about 700) to the blogger? That would take me ages.
I think there is something smugmug should do about it not we. I feel like i am webmaster now not a photographer.

Andy

shfaya wrote:

It looks like we are crazy or something. Each of us is spending probabely tens of hour a week to do the SM look nice and work perfectly. at the begining we were told to put a keywords so i typed ten of them on each photo, later that filename is important, so I started to name the files exactly like keywords, and now we are being told it is description that is important.
I can see just by typing whatever, like for egzample "white horse" that google picks up first hundreds of photos with a white horse in the name and then maby it will pick few photos with a keywords "white horse".
It was said that pasting the photos to the blog will help google to find these photos. Should i send all off them (about 700) to the blogger? That would take me ages.
I think there is something smugmug should do about it not we. I feel like i am webmaster now not a photographer.

Google does google image search differently than crawling page links (like a whole SmugMug Gallery). I'm the #1 search result for

westchester senior portrait

but I don't show up on page 1 for same search for image search.

Google indexes images that are linked in blogs, other websites, etc, based on image title tags.

richpepp

shfaya wrote:

It was said that pasting the photos to the blog will help google to find these photos. Should i send all off them (about 700) to the blogger? That would take me ages.

Hi there

As Andy says, you don't want to send the photos to the blogs - just link to the photo.

Also, FWIW, I have a suspicion that Google picks up stuff better if it is embedded in the photos. I may be wrong but I don't think that Smugmug embeds the keywords in the photos if you keyword online therefore I now try to keyword and describe using Picasa 3 before uploading to Smugmug.

Good luck - this Google image search stuff isn't easy

Richard

Erick L

richpepp wrote:

I don't think that Smugmug embeds the keywords in the photos

The captions are used as alt tags. Google won't pic up keywords if they're hidden, so unless you make them public, keywords have little use except for Smugmug search. Well, it's not entirely true because Google did find some of my keyworded images, but they showed up in a generic Smugmug gallery with other members' photos using the same keywords. So my keywords brought traffic to Smugmug instead of my site.

Frankly, this whole SEO thing is what I dislike the most about SM, not to say I hate it. Title tags, descriptions, keywords, etc, I feel that SM doesn't tell us the whole story but most people don't know about SEO so they buy the wiki page without question (it's not all bad but there's missing info).

Andy

Erick L wrote:

Frankly, this whole SEO thing is what I dislike the most about SM, not to say I hate it.

But I've posted and posted and suggested and suggested and you haven't taken me up yet

Horse to water.... c'mon, Erick - it's really, easy. I'll even do it for you if you want.

shfaya

Hi all And especially Andy.
What I think is like that. If I am a portrait photographer I can give bussiness cards and serve for some big events in my area and with a time by typing the name of this event, in google i would have a chance to be a first on the list.
Unfortunately I am more into nature photography so there is no specific keyword I could be able to win the SEO competition. Because of that I have to keyword each photo and write many description. I would like to have something for a job I do so at least I could susspect that by pasting into google exact phrase from my description I should come on the top. If even EXACT pasting doesn't work than i get upset.

The other think is- IS THERE any way of getting a list of all link of all photos in some gallery. It would help me to paste them all to some blog and getting some movement on my site.

The last think. I post some Blog articles in Blogger and worldpress, I have the meta tags as it was elier sugested, ALL my photos have keywords and many have some descriptions. (You can wisit my site just to check it www.mirophoto.com) what is a pain is the fact that after giving some blog post directly i get at most 30 visitors, the next day 10 and the next 4 or 5.
I guess about 3 of them will be from post on DGRIN, and the rest my Mom.
How the hack I can make some sale with statistics like that? I would think of doing better job as photographer but on other side People buys from me photographs in the shops and chose them between other art works so it is not about photo quality.

Erick L

Why does Smugmug automatically remove the Google image frame? It's very annoying from a visitor's point of view and just read Google might penalize for this. Why?

caroline

I've just come across your post and have a couple of questions please - when you say the file name of the image as it is stored on SmugMug, do you mean a number like this :- 352891497_img_1053.jpg ??
What would be the text immediately adjacent to the image ? Is this something I will have entered at some point - caption or keyword ?

Is there anyway of adding a file name that will be more useful and contribute to better results when searching google images ?

Caroline

pilotdave wrote:

It all has to do with how google decides what it's a picture of. They go by the filename of the image (not the original filename you uploaded, but the filename of the image as it is stored on smugmug) and text immediately adjacent (in the html code) to the image.
Dave

Erick L

caroline wrote:

Is there anyway of adding a file name that will be more useful and contribute to better results when searching google images ?

By having a keyword as a file name. So if you have a sunset picture, instead of 12345.jpg, try sunset.jpg.

Can someone answer my other question? Removing the frame is akin to disabling the back button on the visitor's browser, a technique used to trap visitors.

jfriend

Erick L wrote:

Why does Smugmug automatically remove the Google image frame? It's very annoying from a visitor's point of view and just read Google might penalize for this. Why?

There are a number of Smugmug features that don't work right if the site is framed. If I recall, there are things related to the shopping cart and other cookie-related things. So, in order to keep the site working properly, they break out of the frames.

Though I've never tried this, you can apparently disable the frame breaking functionality (and probably cause some features not to work properly when framed) with this javascript:

framesWarning = false;

caroline

Thank you Erick,
Can someone give me a 'dummies guide' answer to my previous post please - I feel like I'm pulling teeth here :-)

1. Having a keyword as a file name - can I edit file names after uploading if I have a caption as well ? If not, then presumably as I have always ignored and hidden file names, there is nothing can be done except re-upload ?

2. Referring back to the quote fron PilotDave
Originally Posted by pilotdave

It all has to do with how google decides what it's a picture of. They go by the filename of the image (not the original filename you uploaded, but the filename of the image as it is stored on smugmug) and text immediately adjacent (in the html code) to the image.

Dave

What is the text immediately adjacent to the image ? Is this my caption/keyword or is it generated by smugmug ?

Caroline

Erick L

Thanks for our answer jfriend.

1- Smugmug changes your image file name, the one displayed in the adress bar if you look at your image in an empty browser page, so it doesn't really matter what it is upon upload. EXCEPT, SM will use the file name in the keyword field for you if it's a recognizable word. Not sure how they do this exactly but I wouldn't bother changing all your file names and mess with your own file system just for that. Better use the keyword field instead.

2- I think it's the caption.

One issue I've faced with google image is finding a different image in the search results than the one that should be there. For exemple, searching for "moose", I find a photo of a fox because they're in the same mammal gallery.

Sorry, my explanations can be a little laborious. English is a second language and I sometimes need to make three right turns to make a left.

caroline

Erick, thanks for taking the time to reply, your explanation is much appreciated.
It really is frustrating because images in Flickr seem to be found in abundance. 90% at least of my images are captioned and keyworded and yet I have NEVER found a single one in a google image search UNTIL NOW, I searched for 'mendip stave dancers' in google, this gave me 2 results on page one just searching for the words, I then checked the image search and there are 3 images of mine, none of which have anything to do with the search term.
What a PITA this is, I feel like a terrier digging holes all around my garden looking for a bone and never finding it

Caroline

EverythingEverywhere

I moved all of my images from Flickr to a self hosted Gallery2 installation for the sole purpose of trying to improve my ranking in Google Image Search.

Since May 2007 when I moved everything, after doing everything I've read from every source I could find on Google Image Search, I had less than 10% of images even indexed by image search.

Most of the hints which have been given out on this form are really for text searching, not for Image Search. After a year of trying to figure this out, I've determined that Image Search is a black art.

Getting photos listed on Image Search is a big weakness of SmugMug. I think it might be worth the time for someone at SM to have a high level discussion with Google on how they could better get SM photos indexed.

My guess is that this will require a few changes:

1) Renaming files so the file name is something in plain English, not a code. IE: Grand-Canyon-Sunset.jpg not 481289402_RMXxa-M.jpg. I know Gallery2 just renames things at the database level. I don't know how SM would have to implement it, but it is probably the #1 thing to improve Google Image Search results.

2) Funneling spiders to a single image, not every copy of an image. This could be done by selectively blocking where spiders look. Google penalizes duplicate content.

3) Allow for the creation of sites maps for each account which could be submitted to Google.

4) Improve SEO on each photo page. When I look at the page source of a SM page, the image appears to be displayed via some script, not a simple <IMG> tag. If an image isnt in an <IMG> tag, i don't think it exists to Google.

I'm moving to SM despite the weakness in image search because the benefits significantly outweight the disadvantages. (i'm not doing well in Image Search without SM, so the point is sort of moot)

Nonetheless, Google is the 800 pound gorilla on the intenet. If Image Search SEO could be improved, it would be a big boost to SM members who want to sell photos and their services. There are millions of long tail searches which could drive traffic to SM if it took SEO into consideration.

jfriend

EverythingEverywhere wrote:

4) Improve SEO on each photo page. When I look at the page source of a SM page, the image appears to be displayed via some script, not a simple <IMG> tag. If an image isnt in an <IMG> tag, i don't think it exists to Google.

When the Google spider hits Smugmug's pages, the pages are rendered in a different form (regular <img> tags) that works better for indexing. It's the same content that appears via the javascript rendered pages, but a different layout that can be indexed better.

Your other points sound like good things for them to consider.

raebrown

EverythingEverywhere wrote:

Most of the hints which have been given out on this form are really for text searching, not for Image Search. After a year of trying to figure this out, I've determined that Image Search is a black art.

Getting photos listed on Image Search is a big weakness of SmugMug. I think it might be worth the time for someone at SM to have a high level discussion with Google on how they could better get SM photos indexed.

My guess is that this will require a few changes:

1) Renaming files so the file name is something in plain English, not a code. IE: Grand-Canyon-Sunset.jpg not 481289402_RMXxa-M.jpg. I know Gallery2 just renames things at the database level. I don't know how SM would have to implement it, but it is probably the #1 thing to improve Google Image Search results.

With the above example, would it help to include in our keywords - "Grand-Canyon-Sunset.jpg" ? I'm wondering if this would help Google index it as an image.

EverythingEverywhere

While on page text is important, the biggest thing for determine how you rank for certain keywords on Google is anchor text. For example, if I want my travel blog to rank high for the keyword "Travel blog", having a link with the term travel blog is going to make a big difference.

The two biggest factors which go into ranking for Image Search are the name of the file and the alt attribute in the IMG tag.

The Google spider is stupid. I can't see images. All it can do is read text. The name of a file and the alt tag are the two text based features which you can be 100% sure are associated with a given photo.

Other text based things like words in the proximity of the image on the page are taken into account, but have much less of a priority. The keywords you have control over in Smugmug do more for page searching than for Image Searching.

If you want a photo to rank high for "Statue of Liberty", the best bet would be to do the following:

1) Put "statue of liberty" in the name of the file. (Statue-of-liberty.jpg)
2) Put "statue of liberty" in the alt of the IMG tag. (IMG SRC="statue-of-liberty.jpg" ALT="Statue of Liberty")
3) Use CSS to caption the image with "statue of liberty" (not an HTML Table)
4) Have the IMG tag on a page with the "statue of liberty" used frequently
5) Link directly to the image with anchor text statue of liberty

It should be noted that Flickr also does not name their images with common words. However, because they are a large social media site, they have lots of linking going back and fort between groups, comments, etc. This is passing tons of "link juice" between pages. SM users are more isolated because there are no groups like in Flickr, so you don't get as much cross linking between SM pages.

It should also be noted that in the big scheme of things, Flickr Images do not rank well either. The ones which rank highest are usually self hosted images, and this is because there is greater control over file naming. Here is an article I wrote on Flickr and Image Search last year: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/google-image-traffic-and-flickr

It is important to keep in mind that all of this is about Image Search, not normal web searching. If someone is looking for "wedding photographers in Omaha", Image Search doesn't really matter.

However, for some landscape or wildlife photographers, if someone is looking for a particular image of a bird, it could bring them to their site and lead to a sale.

Everything I've mentioned above you can probably find a counter example for. That is why Image Search is a black art.

Doug_C

2) Put "statue of liberty" in the alt of the IMG tag. (IMG SRC="statue-of-liberty.jpg" ALT="Statue of Liberty")

Sorry - I know this is gonna sound dumb - but how do I do this?

I've been working to get my search results better and now getting good hits on the basic Google, now need to get in the 'Image Search'.

So I'm unsure how I can add this ALT tag.

Is it done after the image is uploaded to SM or something I do before I upload?

Any help appreciated.

TIA.

Erick L

Doug_C wrote:

Sorry - I know this is gonna sound dumb - but how do I do this?

You can't. If you change your image file before uploading, SM will use it as keyword but it will be given a new file name anyway.

So I'm unsure how I can add this ALT tag.

Captions are automatically made as ALT tags, so fill your captions.

EverythingEverywhere

Erick L wrote:

You can't. If you change your image file before uploading, SM will use it as keyword but it will be given a new file name anyway.



Captions are automatically made as ALT tags, so fill your captions.

Are any SEO issues on the Smugmug radar for future features to add?? While I realize some of the things I listed would require more work than others, some like a site map should't be too difficult to implement.

Doug_C

Erick L wrote:

You can't. If you change your image file before uploading, SM will use it as keyword but it will be given a new file name anyway.



Captions are automatically made as ALT tags, so fill your captions.

Thanks for the reply.

The more I read - the less I feel in control of my own destiny with SM

Doug_C

This is a bit OT from 'image' search but thought I'd air for comment.

I uploaded a set of images and the following day was No 2 in Google standard search.

Tried today - with exactly the same search term - and not even found

Viewing the URL and keywords are -
****** name="keywords" content="online photo albums, photo sharing, photo hosting, photo storage, video, videos, online video, video sharing, albums, photo albums, photo, sharing, picture sharing, share photos, photo galleries, photo gallery, photos, photographs, online gallery, picture gallery, picture galleries, online galleries, smugmug gallery, smugmug, smug mug, smugmug photos, images, image galleries, image gallery, gallery hosting, galleries hosting, hosting">

None of these relate to my page content.
I've now decided I have no chance of success with SM :deadhorsewhen it comes to getting Googled.

It's almost as if Google indexed my URL OK, then later the page content was changed - and I've lost my listing in favour of SM's keywords.

Am I missing something here?

Am I jumping to the wrong conclusion?

Is there a setting that would prevent my original page to stay the same?

I have followed SM advice, consulted direct with the 'Help' section who eventually basically closed off my request.

What else can I do here?

Andy

Doug_C wrote:

This is a bit OT from 'image' search but thought I'd air for comment.

I uploaded a set of images and the following day was No 2 in Google standard search.

Tried today - with exactly the same search term - and not even found

Viewing the URL and keywords are -
****** name="keywords" content="online photo albums, photo sharing, photo hosting, photo storage, video, videos, online video, video sharing, albums, photo albums, photo, sharing, picture sharing, share photos, photo galleries, photo gallery, photos, photographs, online gallery, picture gallery, picture galleries, online galleries, smugmug gallery, smugmug, smug mug, smugmug photos, images, image galleries, image gallery, gallery hosting, galleries hosting, hosting">

Let's see a link to the image please?

None of these relate to my page content.
I've now decided I have no chance of success with SM :deadhorsewhen it comes to getting Googled.

Why, when I and others have shown it works plenty well. Follow ALL my tips here: http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/Maximize+Search+Engine+Findability

Doug_C

Andy wrote:

Let's see a link to the image please?
Why, when I and others have shown it works plenty well. Follow ALL my tips here: http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/Maximize+Search+Engine+Findability

http://www.dougie-coull-photos.co.uk/gallery/9049008_erFYZ#605949676_d4aSL

And the same situation with this one -

http://www.dougie-coull-photos.co.uk/gallery/9099814_2uNzy#606356696_5MGBX

I will re-visit the tips, but if you can see something obvious that I am missing I'll be very pleased to take your advice Andy.

I thought I had the Google standard search licked until I discovered I had been 'found' high in their ranking one day - and disappeared the next.

This is very frustrating but I'm only quoting facts as I see them - no rant.

Doug_C

Doug_C wrote:

http://www.dougie-coull-photos.co.uk/gallery/9049008_erFYZ#605949676_d4aSL

And the same situation with this one -

http://www.dougie-coull-photos.co.uk/gallery/9099814_2uNzy#606356696_5MGBX

I had thought I would get a response after I submitted the URL asked for?

Maybe not.

I'm confident I'm following all the guidelines but only time I appear in 'image search' is with my Blog.

On another note - I've only just noticed that Fotopic have a Firefox add on that enables search on their site.

Don't know if this will improve their users on 'image search' but seemed a good idea and heightens profile too.

Have SM any plans to introduce one?

Andy

Doug_C wrote:

I had thought I would get a response after I submitted the URL asked for?

Yup, you've got keywords and gallery description - good! Now, wait for some new stuff we'll be adding (I hope, in the not too distant future) to improve GIS.