I link to keyword pages so Google will find them more easily. When I checked what indexed pages, keyword pages always came first and I wanted to bank on it so I began linking to them to give them more importance. For exemple, instead of linking to a fox picture in a mammal gallery, I link to that same picture via /keyword/foxes. Hopefully and eventually, I'd prefer people finding my site when searching for "foxes" to land on the on the foxes keyword page and see the other fox pictures instead of the mammal gallery where they might not see the other photos.
Okay, I see what you mean. But the way to do that is not through the tangled web that is the /keywords URL in its current form. It doesn't scale and leads to too many duplicate pages.
Where do you get these figures from? Why would I get fewer clicks because an image is found on two pages?
It is fairly well known that having multiple URLs all pointing to the same content is seen as spam by search engines and that the relevance of those pages are reduced.
I'll give you an example that I picked from random off one of your photos:
There you have 341 pages for that single keyword. In this case, I might say that this keyword has been over-used across too many images, but setting that aside, if you dig deep enough there are several pages of content all pointing to essentially the same page. Now remove the site:borealphoto.com from the query and I'll add photography to it:
I do not see your site come up until I get somewhere north of 100 results (second page when set to 100 results per page). That is to me an example of a rather precise keyword search term, your site should be coming up in the first 3-4 results. But, because of the use of this keyword across so many pages, it is my belief that it is being seen as some sort of spam by the search engines.
My images are already indexed very quickly. Reading the forum, it seems I'm the only one who gets his images indexed at all (over 3800 today, three time the amount of listed images on my site). Someone found an image uploaded just 5-6 weeks ago and there's no way they could miss it (the third is on the keyword gallery). I was doing fine before SM introduced nicenames (I still don't like nicenames for photos) and a bunch of other SEO stuff. In fact, my traffic took a dive then (all these new urls) and never fully recovered. So you see why I'm weary of SM when you guys decide to temper with SEO.
I think the error some people make (and you haven't, obviously) is to think that good SEO is a hands-off thing. SmugMug sites need to be promoted and linked to, just like anything else.
I am having a bit of trouble parsing the other things you said in this paragraph for some reason. But, there is one thing you said that I think may bolster what I'm saying. That is, when SM introduced the nicenames (and to be honest I'm not sure what was there before that, it was before my time here) your site traffic took a dive. So, without knowing all of the details, I might argue that this was a result of introducing more URLs to the same content and the effect of "spam keywords".
I was doing fine before SM introduced nicenames (I still don't like nicenames for photos) and a bunch of other SEO stuff. In fact, my traffic took a dive then (all these new urls) and never fully recovered. So you see why I'm weary of SM when you guys decide to temper with SEO.
Having relevant words in the actual URL is supposed to significantly improve your SEO if the search engine doesn't think you're spamming. It may be that adding nicenames while not filtering out all the other less desirable ways that the same content could be reached, pushed some Smugmug pages over the edge of what Google thought was spam. In any case, it sounds like Twoofy is trying to improve things now. There is no doubt in my mind that SEO should be better with nicenames than without as long as nothing goes wrong in that implementation.
I really challenge you to show how any similar company is doing better. We're putting amazing amounts of $, resource, energy and time into this always - and have for a long long time. SEO on SmugMug is at an all-time high and getting better.
It's getting better but look at many people complain how their Flickr page does better than their Smugmug site. I'm not saying it's bad now but I just don't take SM's word for granted. I've read too many times "we know better than thou" despite being proven wrong. People here were giving great suggestions that were ignored until you hired some guy with a book. Anyway, I don't want into that again.
The two pages appear to me to be identical. Do you have a different example that might show what you are describing?
The content isn't the same. One has one picture and the other has thumbnails as well. That one picture by itself looks a little stupid but that's the nature of keyword pages.
Okay, I see what you mean. But the way to do that is not through the tangled web that is the /keywords URL in its current form. It doesn't scale and leads to too many duplicate pages.
It is fairly well known that having multiple URLs all pointing to the same content is seen as spam by search engines and that the relevance of those pages are reduced.
What would be the way to do it? I think I have more faith in Google than you do. They are very, very smart. I think Google recognizes the /keyword /popular and /date URLs and knows what they are about. What I notice when I upload new images is google will pick all version at first and then choose most relevent among those.
I do hope you get rid of single image view, or at least block them.
I'll give you an example that I picked from random off one of your photos:
There you have 341 pages for that single keyword. In this case, I might say that this keyword has been over-used across too many images,
There's nothing wrong with multiple results for a keyword. A site about diet would have several results for the keyword "calorie". There's a difference between keywords in a search string and the keywords at Smugmug. The latter are like labels at blogger. They are organizational. Even if I wasn't using SM keywords, Google would still point to those pages for that keyword search because the gallery name is "mammiferes" and applies to all images within that gallery. Every word on a page is a keyword, not just the ones we enter in the keyword field.
but setting that aside, if you dig deep enough there are several pages of content all pointing to essentially the same page.
But they aren't the same pages. They all have a distinct title and the main picture is always different. Even though they're all the same gallery, each "page" (photo) is like single image view, except it's much more convenient for the viewers. That's the beauty of Smugmug style gallery.
Now remove the site:borealphoto.com from the query and I'll add photography to it:
I do not see your site come up until I get somewhere north of 100 results (second page when set to 100 results per page). That is to me an example of a rather precise keyword search term, your site should be coming up in the first 3-4 results. But, because of the use of this keyword across so many pages, it is my belief that it is being seen as some sort of spam by the search engines.
I don't know if I "should" be at the top. I don't think it's a very precise string either (not to mention two words of different languages ). There are thousands of photo sites for those keywords. I did find my site on 20-ish position for "photo mammiferes" but I try to make my site found for even more precise strings, like species. I don't put much effort in my animals galleries as well. I try to pick my battles. I also do better with Google.ca since most of my traffic comes from Canada.
As I said, I think Google can make the difference between keywords used as labels for related content and plain spam. If it were spam, it would look like Niphotos' page.
I DO have a problem with duplicate content because my site is bilingual so two keywords of different languages do point to the exact same content. But that's my problem and Smugmug can't do anything about it.
I think the error some people make (and you haven't, obviously) is to think that good SEO is a hands-off thing. SmugMug sites need to be promoted and linked to, just like anything else.
I think keyword placement is a drop in the bucket. There are so many other little things. Google like stable sites, old sites, sites that are regularly updated and of course, those who with inbound links. It also likes internal links (which keyword pages provide).
Google also takes a "picture" of one's site and I've read it prefers content above the fold. I'm not sure of the mecanics but it's like they pick content just like viewed on a computer screen. You can even guess the size of their "monitor". I've noticed Google never indexed any of my XL. Probably because they don't see them because SM adjust image size according to screen size. Another proof of this is in the URL you picked: it shows pages as if viewed on a monitor of a certain resolution. That's how crazy Google can be.
That is, when SM introduced the nicenames (and to be honest I'm not sure what was there before that, it was before my time here) your site traffic took a dive. So, without knowing all of the details, I might argue that this was a result of introducing more URLs to the same content and the effect of "spam keywords".
Before, all galleries had /gallery/number and photos had /photos/number. As you say, the nicenames introduced a whole bunch of new URLs leading to identical content. I don't think Google saw this as spam but it still had to pick one. I'm sure the nicenames benefited those who had SEO problems but in my case, I was doing fine and those new URLs made Google recalculate or reindex everything so traffic took a dive. Google doesn't like change.
The same happenned with photos. Before, every photo had a unique URL and it took a while for Google to find the new ones.
But the bigger problem is, before the nicenames, one could move things around and the URLs would always remain. This was actually a selling point for me because I've had keywords in the URLs on my old site and they were a pain to manage. Now, if one decides to move a photo to a different gallery or move a gallery from a category to a sub-category, the URL changes and Google has to find it again. The old links still work but Google doesn't see it and has to reindex and traffic takes a dive. For me, this is a clear case where I'd rather have stable URLs over keywords in the URLs. Look at the number of sites with strange URLs that are doing great. Again, Google is smart enough to understand that keywords in the URLs isn't always possible, or even desirable.
Another thing I liked abut the old URLs is that they were short and unobtrusive. I could post them in emails, forums, etc and they wouldn't be spread over two lines. Since the old URLs still exist, I wish we could choose them over the nicenames.
Anyway, blocking keyword pages isn't as big a deal as the horrible SEO we had a couple years ago. I just don't see any reason to block them though. I'm a bit bummed that we're given a certain way of working and then SM decides to scrap something without much a warning.
Once again, it seems like SM could have avoided a problem by simply letting users have an option in the control panel to include or exclude /keywords from robots.txt - regardless of their (SM's) opinion of what it will do for a particular user's SEO or time to index a site.
One of SM's biggest selling points is customizing, and almost without exception it's when a decision is "forced" on users there is major push back.
Quick question about this. Does it mean I'm wasting time by keywording photos or are they still read somehow by the search engines? Thanks for all your time and explanations.
Quick question about this. Does it mean I'm wasting time by keywording photos or are they still read somehow by the search engines? Thanks for all your time and explanations.
Google still sees the keywords because they are on the page but won't crawl the URL /keyword/whatever. It's still worth keywording photos and it's also a good navigation aid for viewers.
Because that is what i want it like , ok , the watermark is to stop people theiving the photo , the words at the top of the page are what Google looked at until Smugmug stopped the urls being seen, **** MOD EDITED, removed rude comments to another customer *******
the words at the top of the page are what Google looked at
Google sees that as spam. Dark text on a dark background makes it even worse. It's also the meta-description and it should be short and read like a sentence instead of a bunch of keywords.
Once again, it seems like SM could have avoided a problem by simply letting users have an option in the control panel to include or exclude /keywords from robots.txt - regardless of their (SM's) opinion of what it will do for a particular user's SEO or time to index a site.
One of SM's biggest selling points is customizing, and almost without exception it's when a decision is "forced" on users there is major push back.
Hi, it's not that simple, I'm sorry I wish it was.
Quick question about this. Does it mean I'm wasting time by keywording photos or are they still read somehow by the search engines? Thanks for all your time and explanations.
Because that is what i want it like , ok , the watermark is to stop people theiving the photo , the words at the top of the page are what Google looked at until Smugmug stopped the urls being seen, ******MOD EDITED OUT RUDE COMMENTS TO another customer *****
You are completely and totally wrong here (because you are yelling, shouting, not reading my posts, or Twoofy's, or jfriend's or others). Album description is HUGELY important and we've never changed that - google sees it and will index it. Has, and will, into the future. Please do not jump to conclusions without the facts.
#2, we are telling you (both SmugMug and other customers) that what you are doing is spammy and will be seen as such.
#3, if you DO NOT treat others with respect in this forum, you will NOT be allowed to participate - am I perfectly clear on this? We have a zero tolerance for rudeness to others. Zero.
Oh yes , maybe i can get the same respect !!!! Big red x has been on the sitemap sitemap-base-xml.gz for three days now , i am not shouting or yelling about this , i never do , so what is the problem with it , when will it be fixed , ..ps not my fault by the way
You are completely and totally wrong here (because you are yelling, shouting, not reading my posts, or Twoofy's, or jfriend's or others). Album description is HUGELY important and we've never changed that - google sees it and will index it. Has, and will, into the future. Please do not jump to conclusions without the facts.
#2, we are telling you (both SmugMug and other customers) that what you are doing is spammy and will be seen as such.
#3, if you DO NOT treat others with respect in this forum, you will NOT be allowed to participate - am I perfectly clear on this? We have a zero tolerance for rudeness to others. Zero.
I strongly encourage you to go back and read all the exhaustive replies made to your posts by me, Twoofy, jfriend, and others - they're really, really helpful. Thanks.
I just wanted you to know that I've read your comments thoroughly. I hear you and will do my best to make sure we are moving things in a positive direction.
I may respond point-by-point at a later time after I've had some time to think through more of this, but do know that I've read everything that you've had to say and I do really appreciate it.
Google still sees the keywords because they are on the page but won't crawl the URL /keyword/whatever. It's still worth keywording photos and it's also a good navigation aid for viewers.
FYI, here's a webmaster guidelines page on Google that offers some does and donts related to Google search indexing. Of interest and relevance to this discussion are these passages from that page:
Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don't add much value for users coming from search engines.
Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
If I look at your Webmaster tools screen shot that you submitted on page 3 of this thread it looks as though the sitemap that has only 19 URLs in it was submitted by you. If you click on the link just above it that says 'Show Submissions - all (3), then you should see a third sitemap which I believe is the one that Smugmug create. I may be wrong but is it possible that you created a sitemap at somepoint and uploaded it as a test? I know that I don't see my Smugmug sitemaps unless I click on that 'All' link.
This doesn't of course explain why your are doing poorly in search although I would just want to reiterate what some of the others have said about excessive keywording and add that Google will also penalize you even more for text that is difficult to read as it could look as though you are trying to hide spammy keywords. I'm not suggesting that you are, just that Google does tweak it's algorithm in small ways every couple of days and you may have suffered from that as much as everything (that may not apply to Image search though which is different and for which there is less info. available)
And for the record, our site has seen a huge increase in photos showing up in Google image search recently without us doing much work so I assume that it is due to the Smugmug changes. Around last November when the sitemaps issue really hit we were down at about 100 images showing. Once the issue was fixed we went up to 900 which was a record for us until then. Today we are at 4900 with many of them appearing high up image search. However I also note that it didn't work quite so well for Jeanna so there are a lot of parts to the picture
Thanks for your input , no i did not create any sitemaps for my site as only sitemaps created by Smugmug can be submitted toGoogle as far as i know ......................... Thanks
If I look at your Webmaster tools screen shot that you submitted on page 3 of this thread it looks as though the sitemap that has only 19 URLs in it was submitted by you. If you click on the link just above it that says 'Show Submissions - all (3), then you should see a third sitemap which I believe is the one that Smugmug create. I may be wrong but is it possible that you created a sitemap at somepoint and uploaded it as a test? I know that I don't see my Smugmug sitemaps unless I click on that 'All' link.
This doesn't of course explain why your are doing poorly in search although I would just want to reiterate what some of the others have said about excessive keywording and add that Google will also penalize you even more for text that is difficult to read as it could look as though you are trying to hide spammy keywords. I'm not suggesting that you are, just that Google does tweak it's algorithm in small ways every couple of days and you may have suffered from that as much as everything (that may not apply to Image search though which is different and for which there is less info. available)
And for the record, our site has seen a huge increase in photos showing up in Google image search recently without us doing much work so I assume that it is due to the Smugmug changes. Around last November when the sitemaps issue really hit we were down at about 100 images showing. Once the issue was fixed we went up to 900 which was a record for us until then. Today we are at 4900 with many of them appearing high up image search. However I also note that it didn't work quite so well for Jeanna so there are a lot of parts to the picture
Thanks for your input , no i did not create any sitemaps for my site as only sitemaps created by Smugmug can be submitted toGoogle as far as i know ......................... Thanks
Actually you can submit your own sitemaps (there is a 'submit' button just above the sitemaps in your image) and you can also delete the ones that are on the page that you showed us by selecting them and clicking on the delete button below. If you click on the 'All(3)' link you should get to the page with the SmugMug generated sitemap which you won't be able to delete - or at least there isn't a delete button.
Now I don't know where the sitemaps you see came from if you didn't upload them but I do seem to remember that the Google interface changed at some point (last year?) which why I know to look for the 'All' link as I've been caught out by this. Maybe it is possible that the sitemaps on the first page are debris from that changeover in some way
In any case, if you have a couple of minutes spare it may be worth clicking on the 'All(3)' link to see what the third sitemap is. If it there and has a more sensible number of URLs in it, ie. 1000s rather than 25, then you can just delete the two on this first page. That's what I did and there wasn't any problems at all
Once again after two months of reasonable figures i see that Google has now reported to me that i now have 4,593 pages restricted by robots.txt , i have not changed any of my pages in that time and i certainly will not be handing over any more of my hard earned cash to SmuMug in the future, sice i joined this pathetic photo sharing site my figures have dropped by at least 70% , now they will try and blame my keywords or lack of them for this problem , maybe even try and blame me , no suprise there !!! like beating ones head against a brick wall............forget it !!!!!
Once again after two months of reasonable figures i see that Google has now reported to me that i now have 4,593 pages restricted by robots.txt , i have not changed any of my pages in that time and i certainly will not be handing over any more of my hard earned cash to SmuMug in the future, sice i joined this pathetic photo sharing site my figures have dropped by at least 70% , now they will try and blame my keywords or lack of them for this problem , maybe even try and blame me , no suprise there !!! like beating ones head against a brick wall............forget it !!!!!
You don't seem to want to listen to our explanation, we (and you) don't want Google crawling those pages we block. I'm really sorry that it upsets you so much but I can promise you this isn't the reason for your figures dropping by 70%. I've previously emailed you offering to take care of you, you declined. Feel free to write me back, ATTN: Andy at the help desk, happy to work something out.
EDIT: I deleted your duplicate post of this same message.
You don't seem to want to listen to our explanation, we (and you) don't want Google crawling those pages we block. I'm really sorry that it upsets you so much but I can promise you this isn't the reason for your figures dropping by 70%. I've previously emailed you offering to take care of you, you declined. Feel free to write me back, ATTN: Andy at the help desk, happy to work something out.
EDIT: I deleted your duplicate post of this same message.
Opps sorry bout that , my mistake , Unreachable by Google now reached today 4.988 pages , yes 4.988 pages that Google cannot crawl , dont worry , i will not be paying Smug Mug any more of my hard earned cash , you obviously have no idea at all about websites and robots.txt , instead i will be making it clear to other people in my new website http://www.niphotos.co.uk about Smug Mug and the disgraceful way i have been treated by your company
Opps sorry bout that , my mistake , Unreachable by Google now reached today 4.988 pages , yes 4.988 pages that Google cannot crawl , dont worry , i will not be paying Smug Mug any more of my hard earned cash , you obviously have no idea at all about websites and robots.txt , instead i will be making it clear to other people in my new website http://www.niphotos.co.uk about Smug Mug and the disgraceful way i have been treated by your company
Not sure how we've treated you disgracefully - I've offered to refund numerous times and you've never replied to me. This is despite the fact that you don't believe us about the urls we are blocking. I'll say it one more time, if you wish, please reply to my emails from our help desk and we'll be happy to assist you. Please make sure there's ATTN: Andy on the email, thank you.
Sorry but your expanation is totally wrong , the url here http://www.niphotos.com/keyword/belfast/2/954652749_Rsdst/Large is of a photo hich shows Cushendun harbour and the keywords for it , it has been restricted by the robots.txt , are you seriously telling me that this is right , total rubbish !!!!!!!!!!!,
Latest from Google ................... not lies from me Joe
Hello. Do you have a question for me? Have you read my replies to you since your post before the one you made today? Do you not see the results that we're all seeing?
You keep focusing on what we're not indexing (stuff you don't want us to index) instead of what we are indexing and that's a shame.
Comments
Maybe I am not following you, but the content on a keyword page is identical.
Link in gallery:
http://www.borealphoto.com/Places/Banff-Jasper/3727282_tyvs8#828264650_tPRcx
Keyword to same photo:
http://www.borealphoto.com/keyword/wapitis#828264650_tPRcx
The two pages appear to me to be identical. Do you have a different example that might show what you are describing?
Okay, I see what you mean. But the way to do that is not through the tangled web that is the /keywords URL in its current form. It doesn't scale and leads to too many duplicate pages.
It is fairly well known that having multiple URLs all pointing to the same content is seen as spam by search engines and that the relevance of those pages are reduced.
I'll give you an example that I picked from random off one of your photos:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&q=mammiferes+site%3Aborealphoto.com&aq=f&aqi=&aql=f&oq=
There you have 341 pages for that single keyword. In this case, I might say that this keyword has been over-used across too many images, but setting that aside, if you dig deep enough there are several pages of content all pointing to essentially the same page. Now remove the site:borealphoto.com from the query and I'll add photography to it:
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&q=mammiferes+photography&aq=f&aqi=&aql=f&oq=
I do not see your site come up until I get somewhere north of 100 results (second page when set to 100 results per page). That is to me an example of a rather precise keyword search term, your site should be coming up in the first 3-4 results. But, because of the use of this keyword across so many pages, it is my belief that it is being seen as some sort of spam by the search engines.
I think the error some people make (and you haven't, obviously) is to think that good SEO is a hands-off thing. SmugMug sites need to be promoted and linked to, just like anything else.
I am having a bit of trouble parsing the other things you said in this paragraph for some reason. But, there is one thing you said that I think may bolster what I'm saying. That is, when SM introduced the nicenames (and to be honest I'm not sure what was there before that, it was before my time here) your site traffic took a dive. So, without knowing all of the details, I might argue that this was a result of introducing more URLs to the same content and the effect of "spam keywords".
- Greg
Homepage • Popular
JFriend's javascript customizations • Secrets for getting fast answers on Dgrin
Always include a link to your site when posting a question
It's getting better but look at many people complain how their Flickr page does better than their Smugmug site. I'm not saying it's bad now but I just don't take SM's word for granted. I've read too many times "we know better than thou" despite being proven wrong. People here were giving great suggestions that were ignored until you hired some guy with a book. Anyway, I don't want into that again.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
yeah that's referring to google image search, which is related but different. And we keep working on that.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I explained it, jfriend explained it, and at least 2 smugmug employees explained it on numerous occasions.
The content isn't the same. One has one picture and the other has thumbnails as well. That one picture by itself looks a little stupid but that's the nature of keyword pages.
What would be the way to do it? I think I have more faith in Google than you do. They are very, very smart. I think Google recognizes the /keyword /popular and /date URLs and knows what they are about. What I notice when I upload new images is google will pick all version at first and then choose most relevent among those.
I do hope you get rid of single image view, or at least block them.
There's nothing wrong with multiple results for a keyword. A site about diet would have several results for the keyword "calorie". There's a difference between keywords in a search string and the keywords at Smugmug. The latter are like labels at blogger. They are organizational. Even if I wasn't using SM keywords, Google would still point to those pages for that keyword search because the gallery name is "mammiferes" and applies to all images within that gallery. Every word on a page is a keyword, not just the ones we enter in the keyword field.
But they aren't the same pages. They all have a distinct title and the main picture is always different. Even though they're all the same gallery, each "page" (photo) is like single image view, except it's much more convenient for the viewers. That's the beauty of Smugmug style gallery.
I don't know if I "should" be at the top. I don't think it's a very precise string either (not to mention two words of different languages
As I said, I think Google can make the difference between keywords used as labels for related content and plain spam. If it were spam, it would look like Niphotos' page.
I DO have a problem with duplicate content because my site is bilingual so two keywords of different languages do point to the exact same content. But that's my problem and Smugmug can't do anything about it.
I think keyword placement is a drop in the bucket. There are so many other little things. Google like stable sites, old sites, sites that are regularly updated and of course, those who with inbound links. It also likes internal links (which keyword pages provide).
Google also takes a "picture" of one's site and I've read it prefers content above the fold. I'm not sure of the mecanics but it's like they pick content just like viewed on a computer screen. You can even guess the size of their "monitor". I've noticed Google never indexed any of my XL. Probably because they don't see them because SM adjust image size according to screen size. Another proof of this is in the URL you picked: it shows pages as if viewed on a monitor of a certain resolution. That's how crazy Google can be.
Before, all galleries had /gallery/number and photos had /photos/number. As you say, the nicenames introduced a whole bunch of new URLs leading to identical content. I don't think Google saw this as spam but it still had to pick one. I'm sure the nicenames benefited those who had SEO problems but in my case, I was doing fine and those new URLs made Google recalculate or reindex everything so traffic took a dive. Google doesn't like change.
The same happenned with photos. Before, every photo had a unique URL and it took a while for Google to find the new ones.
But the bigger problem is, before the nicenames, one could move things around and the URLs would always remain. This was actually a selling point for me because I've had keywords in the URLs on my old site and they were a pain to manage. Now, if one decides to move a photo to a different gallery or move a gallery from a category to a sub-category, the URL changes and Google has to find it again. The old links still work but Google doesn't see it and has to reindex and traffic takes a dive. For me, this is a clear case where I'd rather have stable URLs over keywords in the URLs. Look at the number of sites with strange URLs that are doing great. Again, Google is smart enough to understand that keywords in the URLs isn't always possible, or even desirable.
Another thing I liked abut the old URLs is that they were short and unobtrusive. I could post them in emails, forums, etc and they wouldn't be spread over two lines. Since the old URLs still exist, I wish we could choose them over the nicenames.
Anyway, blocking keyword pages isn't as big a deal as the horrible SEO we had a couple years ago. I just don't see any reason to block them though. I'm a bit bummed that we're given a certain way of working and then SM decides to scrap something without much a warning.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
One of SM's biggest selling points is customizing, and almost without exception it's when a decision is "forced" on users there is major push back.
Facebook
The MoxieBlog
Google still sees the keywords because they are on the page but won't crawl the URL /keyword/whatever. It's still worth keywording photos and it's also a good navigation aid for viewers.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
Google sees that as spam. Dark text on a dark background makes it even worse. It's also the meta-description and it should be short and read like a sentence instead of a bunch of keywords.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
VERY IMPORTANT to keyword your photos! And that is why we say so on our help page http://smugmug.com/help/search-engines
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
You are completely and totally wrong here (because you are yelling, shouting, not reading my posts, or Twoofy's, or jfriend's or others). Album description is HUGELY important and we've never changed that - google sees it and will index it. Has, and will, into the future. Please do not jump to conclusions without the facts.
#2, we are telling you (both SmugMug and other customers) that what you are doing is spammy and will be seen as such.
#3, if you DO NOT treat others with respect in this forum, you will NOT be allowed to participate - am I perfectly clear on this? We have a zero tolerance for rudeness to others. Zero.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I strongly encourage you to go back and read all the exhaustive replies made to your posts by me, Twoofy, jfriend, and others - they're really, really helpful. Thanks.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Erick,
I just wanted you to know that I've read your comments thoroughly. I hear you and will do my best to make sure we are moving things in a positive direction.
I may respond point-by-point at a later time after I've had some time to think through more of this, but do know that I've read everything that you've had to say and I do really appreciate it.
- Greg
Facebook
The MoxieBlog
Homepage • Popular
JFriend's javascript customizations • Secrets for getting fast answers on Dgrin
Always include a link to your site when posting a question
If I look at your Webmaster tools screen shot that you submitted on page 3 of this thread it looks as though the sitemap that has only 19 URLs in it was submitted by you. If you click on the link just above it that says 'Show Submissions - all (3), then you should see a third sitemap which I believe is the one that Smugmug create. I may be wrong but is it possible that you created a sitemap at somepoint and uploaded it as a test? I know that I don't see my Smugmug sitemaps unless I click on that 'All' link.
This doesn't of course explain why your are doing poorly in search although I would just want to reiterate what some of the others have said about excessive keywording and add that Google will also penalize you even more for text that is difficult to read as it could look as though you are trying to hide spammy keywords. I'm not suggesting that you are, just that Google does tweak it's algorithm in small ways every couple of days and you may have suffered from that as much as everything (that may not apply to Image search though which is different and for which there is less info. available)
And for the record, our site has seen a huge increase in photos showing up in Google image search recently without us doing much work so I assume that it is due to the Smugmug changes. Around last November when the sitemaps issue really hit we were down at about 100 images showing. Once the issue was fixed we went up to 900 which was a record for us until then. Today we are at 4900 with many of them appearing high up image search. However I also note that it didn't work quite so well for Jeanna
Actually you can submit your own sitemaps (there is a 'submit' button just above the sitemaps in your image) and you can also delete the ones that are on the page that you showed us by selecting them and clicking on the delete button below. If you click on the 'All(3)' link you should get to the page with the SmugMug generated sitemap which you won't be able to delete - or at least there isn't a delete button.
Now I don't know where the sitemaps you see came from if you didn't upload them but I do seem to remember that the Google interface changed at some point (last year?) which why I know to look for the 'All' link as I've been caught out by this. Maybe it is possible that the sitemaps on the first page are debris from that changeover in some way
In any case, if you have a couple of minutes spare it may be worth clicking on the 'All(3)' link to see what the third sitemap is. If it there and has a more sensible number of URLs in it, ie. 1000s rather than 25, then you can just delete the two on this first page. That's what I did and there wasn't any problems at all
You don't seem to want to listen to our explanation, we (and you) don't want Google crawling those pages we block. I'm really sorry that it upsets you so much but I can promise you this isn't the reason for your figures dropping by 70%. I've previously emailed you offering to take care of you, you declined. Feel free to write me back, ATTN: Andy at the help desk, happy to work something out.
EDIT: I deleted your duplicate post of this same message.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Opps sorry bout that , my mistake , Unreachable by Google now reached today 4.988 pages , yes 4.988 pages that Google cannot crawl , dont worry , i will not be paying Smug Mug any more of my hard earned cash , you obviously have no idea at all about websites and robots.txt , instead i will be making it clear to other people in my new website http://www.niphotos.co.uk about Smug Mug and the disgraceful way i have been treated by your company
Not sure how we've treated you disgracefully - I've offered to refund numerous times and you've never replied to me. This is despite the fact that you don't believe us about the urls we are blocking. I'll say it one more time, if you wish, please reply to my emails from our help desk and we'll be happy to assist you. Please make sure there's ATTN: Andy on the email, thank you.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Google for cushendun harbour, go ahead. Your gallery result is the 6th on page one of Google's results.
Tell me again how we've failed here please?
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I just searched for 'antrim marina' one of your keywords. It appears on page 1
http://www.google.com/search?q=antrim+marina&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Then I searched for 'blackhead lighthouse', it too appears on page one of google
http://www.google.com/search?q=blackhead+lighthouse&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
Then I tried 'fermnagh lakelands images' and found this on page 1 of google
http://www.google.com/search?q=fermnagh+lakelands+images&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
So again, I'm going to ask, exactly how are we failing to help you with really amazing SEO?
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
In Sitemaps (3)
Not followed (10)
Restricted by robots.txt (5,090)
Unreachable (116
Latest from Google ................... not lies from me Joe
_________________________________________________
Hello. Do you have a question for me? Have you read my replies to you since your post before the one you made today? Do you not see the results that we're all seeing?
You keep focusing on what we're not indexing (stuff you don't want us to index) instead of what we are indexing and that's a shame.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter