Webmaster Tools suggested I change parameters?

jachang

My Webmaster Tools settings just came up with a new message saying that "Googlebot has crawled my site and made the following suggestions for changes to my parameters."

I want to do everything I can to be found on Google, so I don't know if changing these will make things better or worse. Does anyone understand this stuff? I've attached a screenshot of what they said. I didn't think I could even change anything. I thought SmugMug set all the parameters, so I'm really lost here.

richpepp

Hi Jean

For what it's worth what you are seeing there is exactly what I see as well. I think the only one that would make a difference to change here is setting ImageID to not ignore. As far as I can see changing it won't harm you at all but others may have more experience here

Good luck

Rich

jachang

richpepp wrote:

Hi Jean

For what it's worth what you are seeing there is exactly what I see as well. I think the only one that would make a difference to change here is setting ImageID to not ignore. As far as I can see changing it won't harm you at all but others may have more experience here

Good luck

Rich

Thank you, Rich.

What exactly does "ImageID" look for? If it's the file name, then maybe I'm just as well off having it skip that because I had already uploaded my photos with the usual "camera" file names, not nice descriptions like I should have. I was hoping the AltTxt would substitute for it. Am I barking up the wrong tree?

richpepp

jachang wrote:

What exactly does "ImageID" look for? If it's the file name, then maybe I'm just as well off having it skip that because I had already uploaded my photos with the usual "camera" file names, not nice descriptions like I should have. I was hoping the AltTxt would substitute for it. Am I barking up the wrong tree?

If you look at a typical URL in your address bar it looks like this: photos.miseast.org/Nepal/WASHkarnali0809/10917154_9FhRB#763746539_UUqnf

The 10917154 number is the gallery, the 763746539 is the ImageID and UUqnf is the ImageKey as far as I can see. The image ID is the actual filename that smugmug uses rather than the filename of the file as you uploaded it.

However, I don't think that Google does actually ignore it as we have lots of photos from the same gallery indexed and Google doesn't see the site in the same way that we do. On the other hand I can't see that it does any harm to ask Google not to ignore it.

Hope that helps (and that it is correct )

Rich

jachang

richpepp wrote:

If you look at a typical URL in your address bar it looks like this: photos.miseast.org/Nepal/WASHkarnali0809/10917154_9FhRB#763746539_UUqnf

The 10917154 number is the gallery, the 763746539 is the ImageID and UUqnf is the ImageKey as far as I can see. The image ID is the actual filename that smugmug uses rather than the filename of the file as you uploaded it.

However, I don't think that Google does actually ignore it as we have lots of photos from the same gallery indexed and Google doesn't see the site in the same way that we do. On the other hand I can't see that it does any harm to ask Google not to ignore it.

Hope that helps (and that it is correct

Rich

When you say that SmugMug uses the image ID as the actual filename, that's just for the url? On the SEO threads we were told how important it is to use descriptive file names and not the generic ones from the camera. SM doesn't change these, right? They just assign an "additional" ID for each image (imageID)? Where did you learn all this stuff? I'm amazed.

richpepp

jachang wrote:

When you say that SmugMug uses the image ID as the actual filename, that's just for the url? On the SEO threads we were told how important it is to use descriptive file names and not the generic ones from the camera. SM doesn't change these, right? They just assign an "additional" ID for each image (imageID)? Where did you learn all this stuff? I'm amazed.

Hi Jean

I might be wrong with this stuff, I try not to answer as I don't really know - I can only say what I think that I see. I keep hoping that a Smuggie will chip in as I'm sure that they know better

As for the file names, it's a good question and I'm not really sure. What I seem to remember is that SmugMug generate unique ids for all of the reduced versions of the photos but not the originals (again someone please correct me if I'm wrong). If you do an owner save of the photo you will see the photo named with the ImageID and the original filename. However as most of us have the originals not available for public view this means that search engines will never see that filename. However I don't worry about that too much as it is only one of a large number of factors that are taken into account, the most important of which is possibly getting external links into your photos.

Good luck with this stuff. It seems to take forever to make a difference.

Rich

Bob_A

Just catching up to this, but was wondering pretty much the same thing. Of the following parameters:

Found parameters: Data Type format rand NickName ImageID ImageKey Size AlbumID AlbumKey KeywordsBy goTo

which ones should be set to "Ignore" for more efficient crawling by Google?

jfriend

Bob_A wrote: »

Just catching up to this, but was wondering pretty much the same thing. Of the following parameters:

Found parameters: Data Type format rand NickName ImageID ImageKey Size AlbumID AlbumKey KeywordsBy goTo

which ones should be set to "Ignore" for more efficient crawling by Google?

Tell Google to ignore these because they don't affect which images is being shown:

format, rand, size


You should not ignore these as they all determine which image is being shown:

ImageID, ImageKey or AlbumID


I don't know about the others as they may depend upon the context.

Bob_A

jfriend wrote: »

Tell Google to ignore these because they don't affect which images is being shown:

format, rand, size


You should not ignore these as they all determine which image is being shown:

ImageID, ImageKey or AlbumID


I don't know about the others as they may depend upon the context.

Thanks John, I'll try your suggestions.