You know, ..... it is very very hard for me to come in here and open up a Pro account when "it seems" that Admin can not address the SEO issue, which also looks like it has been a issue here for a long time.
I mean, ... give me a real, "no beat around the bush" answer on Google indexing issues!
I have a business to run, I actively market myself, and I always like seeing up to date and real answers that will help me even more with my business!
I'm not trashing, nor bashing, ... but I'm beginning to wonder!
Michael, I agree.
I'd just like to summarise my thoughts.
Firstly, most of us joined Smugmug because we all love photography and want our photos online to be seen and found by people from all around the world.
Secondly, I think I can safely say that most of us are photographers, rather than programmers skilled in the art of website customisation and search engine optimisation. I don't think I would be out of line to say that we would love to be spending most of our time devoted to what we do and love best, which is photography, rather than coding or scratching our heads figuring out why our photos aren't being seen or found despite doing what we have been advised to do by Smugmug.
My disappointment is three-fold.
Firstly, I am disappointed that I went to all the trouble of providing hard evidence with screen captures of all my stats from Smugmug vs Google Analytics vs Flickr, and yet there has still been no attempt at a response from Smugmug to discuss this issue at all in an open manner.
Secondly, it is demoralising to expend so much time and effort devoted to creating our photographs and uploading them onto our site, only to find that they exist in a walled garden, mostly unseen to the rest of the world apart from those who are also Smugmug members.
Thirdly, after diligently following the instructions set out by Smugmug such as using keywords and captions and descriptions etc etc to increase our visibility on the web, I feel like I have held up my end of the agreement but Smugmug has not.
This is such a critical issue and I am surprised that there has been so little input from Smugmug about it. Others have contributed their expertise to try and suggest what may be causing the problems and potential ways to fix it. Could we start to discuss this in a more open manner?
Finally, as for the suggestion of putting our photos up in a Picasa account, I don't believe that this is in the spirit of good web practices for several reasons.
a. It contradicts the first basic principle in Google's Quality Guidelines for websites:
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."
The sole purpose of duplicating photos onto a Picasa account is to direct users straight back to your Smugmug site.
b. It contradicts the second basic principle in Google's Quality Guidelines for websites:
Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"
The answer to this is clearly "NO".
c. It is time consuming, especially when it already takes so much time to upload photos to your Smugmug account.
d. Unlike other useful things like submitting to Digg and embedding your photos in a blog, both of which add value, the creation of a Picasa account with duplicates of your photos adds no extra value to the web.
I have read through this thread and tried everything to no avail. I shoot sporting events around my area on spec. along with a few others. When you do a search of that even there are my competitors but I am no where to be found.
Smug support is second to none but this thread just seems to go unrecognized. My pro account is up for renewal in a few weeks and I think I will be going the route of setting up my own site.
I mean, ... give me a real, "no beat around the bush" answer on Google indexing issues!
I'm sorry, what, specifically, that's on my wiki page of suggestions, is 'beating around the bush'?
We don't control exactly how Google Indexes but we know that they grab our keywords, and album descriptions and even captions. That's why it's prominent on my list.
I'm sorry, what, specifically, that's on my wiki page of suggestions, is 'beating around the bush'?
We don't control exactly how Google Indexes but we know that they grab our keywords, and album descriptions and even captions. That's why it's prominent on my list.
Andy, I think the point of the discussion is that you keep saying that "we know that they grab our keywords, and album descriptions and even captions" but this is clearly not the case with all users, which was why I took the trouble to put up my stats.
Perhaps put yourself in our shoes for a minute. You've paid for a Pro account for a service that you expected to give your photos exposure on the web. I advised you to add in keywords and descriptions etc and yet your images are still nowhere to be found on Google. You keep telling me that your images can't be found and I keep telling you that Google DOES see all your keywords and descriptions. What would you do then?
Andy, I think the point of the discussion is that you keep saying that "we know that they grab our keywords, and album descriptions and even captions" but this is clearly not the case with all users, which was why I took the trouble to put up my stats.
Usually we find that a site just isn't fully indexed - but they'll get to it, always. It's funny, sometimes you can set up a gallery and it's indexed in minutes, then sometimes it's weeks or longer or never?
All this said, if there's ways we can improve this we'll try.
I have read through this thread and tried everything to no avail. I shoot sporting events around my area on spec. along with a few others. When you do a search of that even there are my competitors but I am no where to be found.
Smug support is second to none but this thread just seems to go unrecognized. My pro account is up for renewal in a few weeks and I think I will be going the route of setting up my own site.
Dano, where's your site? I see no link in your dgrin profile or dgrin post (incidentally, said links will increase your google-ablity )
We don't control exactly how Google Indexes but we know that they grab our keywords, and album descriptions and even captions. That's why it's prominent on my list.
True, you can't control how Google indexes pages. However, what you can control is the content of SmugMug, and you can change it so that Google Image Search will index the pictures. Picasa, Flickr, and other image hosting sites have figured it out, so it can't be all that hard to do.
Right now, Google will pick up some keywords and captions. But because of how the website is set up, to Google it looks like SmugMug is a website with no pictures at all! That's why when you do a normal Google search, links to users and galleries will sometimes show up, but when you specifically do a search for images using Google Image Search, nothing shows up.
That's the issue here: nothing is picked up by Google Image Search. You are right in saying that sometimes Google immediately finds the gallery in minutes. But not in Google Image Search. When people are looking for specific random pictures, they will probably do it using Google Image Search. Since SmugMug is not in that universe of sites that Google Image Search can find, that means we are being missed by a lot of people who are searching for images.
I think what I, shrekie, and everybody else is saying here, is that a website devoted to hosting images should be set up in such a way so that Google Image Search will index those images, since Google Image Search is the biggest player in the game. Frankly, this is so important I would want SmugMug to stop working on any new website features until this is resolved.
I guess a perfectly clear explanation is in order here. When you Google my name, SmugMug is near the top: http://tinyurl.com/chc4uy Yay! This is great.
But when you do a Google Image Search for my pictures, there isn't a single image indexed there: http://tinyurl.com/colsmy
If you do a regular Google search of my SmugMug domain, there are results: http://tinyurl.com/creymx . But again, there are no results for Google Image Search.
Usually we find that a site just isn't fully indexed - but they'll get to it, always. It's funny, sometimes you can set up a gallery and it's indexed in minutes, then sometimes it's weeks or longer or never?
All this said, if there's ways we can improve this we'll try.
Photos that I uploaded when I first joined Smugmug almost exactly a year ago, are still not findable via Google or Google Image Search.
I absolutely agree with doctorgonzo in that all other features are almost insignificant if this problem with picture findability is not rectified, especially for Smugmug which is supposed to be a photo hosting site.
Firstly, does Smugmug actually accept that there is a problem here, and secondly, can you tell us in more specific terms exactly what Smugmug is doing in terms of "looking into this"?
p.s. using doctorgonzo's method, I have 6 of my images appear (out of a total of about 1500 on my site), of which one was actually posted by Andy in a forum thread.
Firstly, does Smugmug actually accept that there is a problem here, and secondly, can you tell us in more specific terms exactly what Smugmug is doing in terms of "looking into this"?
I can't say there's a problem unless I can replicate it. There are so many sites, photos, pages, galleries found by google, so the trick is to find out why, exactly yours, aren't.
Can I have a link to a gallery that you think SHOULD be found. And a photo that should be found.
And please, define "found" - in Google search results, searching for what terms, okay?
I can't say there's a problem unless I can replicate it. There are so many sites, photos, pages, galleries found by google, so the trick is to find out why, exactly yours, aren't.
Can I have a link to a gallery that you think SHOULD be found. And a photo that should be found.
If you click on the links in my post, you will see that Google Image Search finds zero images for my site.
How about that photo? How would / does Google Image Search find that?
Since you haven't given it a unique name or keyworded it, Google Image Search would have a hard time finding it (although if you did a search on IMG_1767, I bet it would be in there somewhere along with the thousands of other images with that name.
But if you do keyword that image on Flickr and give it a unique name, Google Image Search would find it. When I had a Flickr account, a lot of traffic was driven from keywords on Google Image Search. The issue that everybody is complaining about here is that even when we do keyword and caption images on SmugMug, Google Image Search won't capture them, because as you just said Google Image Search doesn't capture anything on SmugMug.
Can that be changed? That's what everybody here seems to want.
Since you haven't given it a unique name or keyworded it, Google Image Search would have a hard time finding it (although if you did a search on IMG_1767, I bet it would be in there somewhere along with the thousands of other images with that name.
But if you do keyword that image on Flickr and give it a unique name, Google Image Search would find it. When I had a Flickr account, a lot of traffic was driven from keywords on Google Image Search. The issue that everybody is complaining about here is that even when we do keyword and caption images on SmugMug, Google Image Search won't capture them, because as you just said Google Image Search doesn't capture anything on SmugMug.
I'm discussing - and have been. And our CEO even posted on this subject, too. I'm not sure what you mean by your statement
What I was looking for was (and others correct me if I am wrong) was a definitive statement why this wasn't working. You finally just gave one: Google Image Search will not index SmugMug. I think the frustration people were having was that it took a long time in this thread before you admitted this to be the case.
Apparently, Google Image Search does find a few images on SmugMug, but it is very hit and miss. As I posted above, it finds zero on my site. IMO, every single image of mine should be indexable on Google Image Search. I'm sure others here will agree.
Can that be changed? That's what everybody here seems to want.
Since you haven't given it a unique name or keyworded it, Google Image Search would have a hard time finding it (although if you did a search on IMG_1767, I bet it would be in there somewhere along with the thousands of other images with that name.
But if you do keyword that image on Flickr and give it a unique name, Google Image Search would find it. When I had a Flickr account, a lot of traffic was driven from keywords on Google Image Search. The issue that everybody is complaining about here is that even when we do keyword and caption images on SmugMug, Google Image Search won't capture them, because as you just said Google Image Search doesn't capture anything on SmugMug.
I'll try and find out if there's more we can do. Thanks!
That's an Eiffel tower search via google image search.
Try eiffel tower smugmug and see.
So it appears that they do find them.... no?
Andy, I went through 30 SEPRs for "smugmug Eiffel tower" search term on http://images.google.com and here's my initial conclusion:
Most of the images indexed by Google were on the first page of the SmugMug gallery or they were a result of a direct link from a forum/blog. I saw one result with an image being on a second page of a gallery and my guess it was also a result of direct linking or some other unnatural path. I consider a natural path being a link on the source site itself not hard-linked externally.
Site's architecture should be such that once google has knowledge about a site it finds ALL it's content/pages through internal links. In other words all pages on a site must have a natural path to them that google can find and they should be originating from a home-page or a sitemap of some sort. I run over 20 domains and that's my experience so far -- home page links are the most valuable since homepage is what google pools most frequently (I watch my server logs and can attest to that).
Andy,
Can you please explain - your search of google images for 'bodiam castle moon river' is surely unrealistic ? If I just search google images using 'bodiam castle' your image is 8 pages down, not great considering some of the results that precede it
If I search google images for 'priddy fair' I get one image on page 3 and then nothing - I looked down to page 15 and gave up. I have 102 images keyworded 'priddy fair' and around 200 'priddy fair yyyy' .
'priddy fair caroline shipsey' returns 2 pages, the first 8 images are actually 'priddy fair' then 16 pbase images that were not keyworded but just in a gallery called 'priddy fair 2006' with a total of 16 images. So there is obviously an inconsistency just in this respect.
Are you saying that we should only expect google images to return a result if the search term includes our name/website name. Sorry I'm not so techie as the others here but I'm a classic example of why this isn't working properly.
I hope you can unravel something from the foregoing information that will assist in resolving this.
I think, to this point, the summary is as follows:
1) Google Image Search has a very hard, if not impossible, time of indexing images on the SmugMug site or any personal domains on the site.
2) #1 is a result of how SmugMug pages are currently designed.
3) To give Google Image Search the best shot at indexing images on SmugMug, you have to post the image elsewhere, such as to a blog, forum, or other photo hosting site. This only works on a per-image basis, not gallery-wide, so if you want to give Google Image Search the best chance at indexing 100 images in a gallery, you'll have to post those 100 images elsewhere.
4) SmugMug is aware of this situation, but has not made any indication that they will definitively work to correct this so that all images are indexable by Google Image Search.
I think, to this point, the summary is as follows:
1) Google Image Search has a very hard, if not impossible, time of indexing images on the SmugMug site or any personal domains on the site.
2) #1 is a result of how SmugMug pages are currently designed.
3) To give Google Image Search the best shot at indexing images on SmugMug, you have to post the image elsewhere, such as to a blog, forum, or other photo hosting site. This only works on a per-image basis, not gallery-wide, so if you want to give Google Image Search the best chance at indexing 100 images in a gallery, you'll have to post those 100 images elsewhere.
4) SmugMug is aware of this situation, but has not made any indication that they will definitively work to correct this so that all images are indexable by Google Image Search.
Andy, ... thanks for getting in here and mixing it up a bit.
Appreciate it!
The reason I came into this thread with questions, (one who has not signed up for a single thing yet except for the 14 day trial), is because I saw this thread and the problems with SEO.
Naturally, ... it somewhat concerned me.
You mentioned earlier today, that you were the one who started this thread and you do read it. Thats great!
But, ... this thread was started back in Oct. of 2006 and almost immediately there were concerns about the lack of SEO from the members, and here it is Feb. of 2009 and those same concerns from members still exist.
So, ... I am just wondering how important SEO is to SM?
It certainly is a concern to many members it seems!
Of course, I would never rely on search engines to pull in a lot of business for me. I rely on my marketing efforts directly to the consultants/designers for that.
But still, a site with good SEO will often help, ... and I am just wondering what SM's "sure fire" answer is to this problem.
I know that I am new in here, (hope that I have not offended anyone), and jumped right into the fire right from the start, ... but I could not help but noticing this thread and how long it has been going along and nothing much has changed.
After all of this, ... I think that SmugMug will still do me just fine as long as I rely on my own marketing, ... so I probably will sign up soon for the Pro account.
So, ... I am just wondering how important SEO is to SM?
It certainly is a concern to many members it seems!
Michael.
I started this thread to get the community's additions to a wiki page I made. I hope this thread lives to 100yrs old! I started this thread because this is a very important topic to me. I think a lot of this stuff is time and energy related. I have put a ton of time and energy into my online presence and I get found.
Can SmugMug do more? I don't know for sure, but we are always looking for ways to improve and I hope we can here, also
I can't say there's a problem unless I can replicate it. There are so many sites, photos, pages, galleries found by google, so the trick is to find out why, exactly yours, aren't.
Can I have a link to a gallery that you think SHOULD be found. And a photo that should be found.
And please, define "found" - in Google search results, searching for what terms, okay?
Thanks Andy. I don't think you need to be able to personally replicate something before you can accept that there is a problem, especially if other users have been providing objective evidence to support this. The important thing is that Smugmug is now offering to find out WHY exactly some users photos are not being found by Google. I think that this is what we have all been hoping and expecting Smugmug to do - to try to investigate and elicit the problem and then to make steps to rectify it.
It is the very first gallery that I uploaded onto my site a year ago and has consistently had at least about 1000-2000 hits per month since then. If you search for "world laser championships terrigal 2008" in Google Search, it appears on the first page. However, if you search for the same thing in Google Image Search, a total of 249 images are found, of which 2 of those are mine (one on page 4, and one on page 10), NEITHER of which are relevant results relating to the search query - one is a photo of Hong Kong from my home page, and another is a photo of my portrait in my bio. So it isn't even that the photos are ranked lowly, but that they're not seen by Google Image at all.
If you search for "hainan island china", my site doesn't appear in the first 20 pages of either Google Search or Google Image Search. The real world implications of this is that my partner had uploaded ONE photo of the Sanya Hilton resort onto her flickr account. She was contacted by a tourism agency and made a sale on that. I had uploaded over 30 images and had no enquiries, even though my photo was almost identical to hers (and at a higher resolution as well). I can say for sure how the agency came to find her photo, but if you do any image search on Google Image, many of the results are from Flickr accounts.
As for my comment about Smugmug not addressing this issue, I said this because from Feb 3rd until Feb 14th, there was no input from Smugmug in this thread, despite many people here asking for a discussion. I know none of us expect Smugmug to answer to every post, but please bear in mind that this is one of the 2nd most read threads in the Smugmug Pro Sales Support thread, and is an important issue especially to the paying Pro customers of Smugmug. Also, I searched back to July last year on the CEO's blog and could find no mention of this issue - can you please provide us with a direct link?
Lastly, you have illustrated several times now the results of searching for things like "'bodiam castle moon river" or "eifel tower smug mug", but these are obviously not realistic searches. Who is the target audience that would ever enter these as search queries?
Lastly, you have illustrated several times now the results of searching for things like "'bodiam castle moon river" or "eifel tower smug mug", but these are obviously not realistic searches. Who is the target audience that would ever enter these as search queries?
Schrekie. I was only trying to show that GIS has found SmugMug images. That's all. I'm sorry I made you think otherwise.
Shrekie, and all - please allow us some time now. I've set in motion some discussion at SmugMug. And now, I'm off to WPPI till Thursday and won't have much time to check in to this thread, thanks.
Schrekie. I was only trying to show that GIS has found SmugMug images. That's all. I'm sorry I made you think otherwise.
Shrekie, and all - please allow us some time now. I've set in motion some discussion at SmugMug. And now, I'm off to WPPI till Thursday and won't have much time to check in to this thread, thanks.
Thanks for the clarification Andy. Much appreciated. I think it is useful to know that "eiffel tower smugmug" returns results with GIS where "eiffel tower" doesn't. On the other hand, if I search for "world laser championships terrigal 2008 smugmug", or "world laser championships terrigal 2008 looking glass photography", none of the relevant images from my site shows up.
Please know that I really love Smugmug and that I am passionate about this issue only because I want both my website and Smugmug to be better. Smugmug's customer service as well as all the brilliant folks in Dgrin are really second to none, and I had been praising this company to many friends, family and fellow photographers, even on my Flickr site:) With most other issues so far, Smugmug has usually gone the extra mile to try and improve their service for their customers, and I am hoping that they will continue to do so with this issue as well.
As much as I would like to, I can't really recommend Smugmug to other photographers who are considering signing up for a Pro account until the SEO issue is attended to, so hopefully it will be fixed soon.
Thanks for setting things in motion at Smugmug and escalating this issue Andy. Much appreciated.
Hi Andy! Thanks for keeping in touch with this. I know you're a busy guy! (love the Valentine's avatar btw!)
As requested, here's another good example:
Within the brackets is my exact search term. I used quotes to illustrate an exact search (whereas searches without quotes are considered "natural" searches).
Comments
Michael, I agree.
I'd just like to summarise my thoughts.
Firstly, most of us joined Smugmug because we all love photography and want our photos online to be seen and found by people from all around the world.
Secondly, I think I can safely say that most of us are photographers, rather than programmers skilled in the art of website customisation and search engine optimisation. I don't think I would be out of line to say that we would love to be spending most of our time devoted to what we do and love best, which is photography, rather than coding or scratching our heads figuring out why our photos aren't being seen or found despite doing what we have been advised to do by Smugmug.
My disappointment is three-fold.
Firstly, I am disappointed that I went to all the trouble of providing hard evidence with screen captures of all my stats from Smugmug vs Google Analytics vs Flickr, and yet there has still been no attempt at a response from Smugmug to discuss this issue at all in an open manner.
Secondly, it is demoralising to expend so much time and effort devoted to creating our photographs and uploading them onto our site, only to find that they exist in a walled garden, mostly unseen to the rest of the world apart from those who are also Smugmug members.
Thirdly, after diligently following the instructions set out by Smugmug such as using keywords and captions and descriptions etc etc to increase our visibility on the web, I feel like I have held up my end of the agreement but Smugmug has not.
This is such a critical issue and I am surprised that there has been so little input from Smugmug about it. Others have contributed their expertise to try and suggest what may be causing the problems and potential ways to fix it. Could we start to discuss this in a more open manner?
Finally, as for the suggestion of putting our photos up in a Picasa account, I don't believe that this is in the spirit of good web practices for several reasons.
a. It contradicts the first basic principle in Google's Quality Guidelines for websites: The sole purpose of duplicating photos onto a Picasa account is to direct users straight back to your Smugmug site.
b. It contradicts the second basic principle in Google's Quality Guidelines for websites: The answer to this is clearly "NO".
c. It is time consuming, especially when it already takes so much time to upload photos to your Smugmug account.
d. Unlike other useful things like submitting to Digg and embedding your photos in a blog, both of which add value, the creation of a Picasa account with duplicates of your photos adds no extra value to the web.
Website: www.lookingglassphotography.com.au
Blog: http://lookingglassphotography.posterous.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LookingGlassPho
Smug support is second to none but this thread just seems to go unrecognized. My pro account is up for renewal in a few weeks and I think I will be going the route of setting up my own site.
DMunsonPhoto
MaxPreps Profile
Sports Shooter
Hey, I started this thread, I see every post
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We don't control exactly how Google Indexes but we know that they grab our keywords, and album descriptions and even captions. That's why it's prominent on my list.
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Andy, I think the point of the discussion is that you keep saying that "we know that they grab our keywords, and album descriptions and even captions" but this is clearly not the case with all users, which was why I took the trouble to put up my stats.
Perhaps put yourself in our shoes for a minute. You've paid for a Pro account for a service that you expected to give your photos exposure on the web. I advised you to add in keywords and descriptions etc and yet your images are still nowhere to be found on Google. You keep telling me that your images can't be found and I keep telling you that Google DOES see all your keywords and descriptions. What would you do then?
Website: www.lookingglassphotography.com.au
Blog: http://lookingglassphotography.posterous.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LookingGlassPho
All this said, if there's ways we can improve this we'll try.
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True, you can't control how Google indexes pages. However, what you can control is the content of SmugMug, and you can change it so that Google Image Search will index the pictures. Picasa, Flickr, and other image hosting sites have figured it out, so it can't be all that hard to do.
Right now, Google will pick up some keywords and captions. But because of how the website is set up, to Google it looks like SmugMug is a website with no pictures at all! That's why when you do a normal Google search, links to users and galleries will sometimes show up, but when you specifically do a search for images using Google Image Search, nothing shows up.
That's the issue here: nothing is picked up by Google Image Search. You are right in saying that sometimes Google immediately finds the gallery in minutes. But not in Google Image Search. When people are looking for specific random pictures, they will probably do it using Google Image Search. Since SmugMug is not in that universe of sites that Google Image Search can find, that means we are being missed by a lot of people who are searching for images.
I think what I, shrekie, and everybody else is saying here, is that a website devoted to hosting images should be set up in such a way so that Google Image Search will index those images, since Google Image Search is the biggest player in the game. Frankly, this is so important I would want SmugMug to stop working on any new website features until this is resolved.
I guess a perfectly clear explanation is in order here. When you Google my name, SmugMug is near the top: http://tinyurl.com/chc4uy Yay! This is great.
But when you do a Google Image Search for my pictures, there isn't a single image indexed there: http://tinyurl.com/colsmy
If you do a regular Google search of my SmugMug domain, there are results: http://tinyurl.com/creymx . But again, there are no results for Google Image Search.
That is the issue.
Photos that I uploaded when I first joined Smugmug almost exactly a year ago, are still not findable via Google or Google Image Search.
I absolutely agree with doctorgonzo in that all other features are almost insignificant if this problem with picture findability is not rectified, especially for Smugmug which is supposed to be a photo hosting site.
Firstly, does Smugmug actually accept that there is a problem here, and secondly, can you tell us in more specific terms exactly what Smugmug is doing in terms of "looking into this"?
p.s. using doctorgonzo's method, I have 6 of my images appear (out of a total of about 1500 on my site), of which one was actually posted by Andy in a forum thread.
Website: www.lookingglassphotography.com.au
Blog: http://lookingglassphotography.posterous.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LookingGlassPho
Can I have a link to a gallery that you think SHOULD be found. And a photo that should be found.
And please, define "found" - in Google search results, searching for what terms, okay?
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If you click on the links in my post, you will see that Google Image Search finds zero images for my site.
AFAIK, Google image search won't grab our images from a SmugMug gallery - it looks for alt text and words in the file names. We have image#s.
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http://flickr.com/photos/moonriverphotography/3264685109/in/photostream/
How about that photo? How would / does Google Image Search find that?
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Can that be changed? That's what everybody here seems to want.
Since you haven't given it a unique name or keyworded it, Google Image Search would have a hard time finding it (although if you did a search on IMG_1767, I bet it would be in there somewhere along with the thousands of other images with that name.
But if you do keyword that image on Flickr and give it a unique name, Google Image Search would find it. When I had a Flickr account, a lot of traffic was driven from keywords on Google Image Search. The issue that everybody is complaining about here is that even when we do keyword and caption images on SmugMug, Google Image Search won't capture them, because as you just said Google Image Search doesn't capture anything on SmugMug.
I'm discussing - and have been. And our CEO even posted on this subject, too. I'm not sure what you mean by your statement
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I found this:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://ajnikaj.smugmug.com/photos/322309236_YB2Ap-D.jpg&imgrefurl=http://ajnikaj.smugmug.com/gallery/5287993_8Ge3x&usg=__um4sK522-LhG028-rgkwu1pAIGI=&h=2852&w=4304&sz=415&hl=en&start=5&um=1&tbnid=gOZlmBPW5UIS6M:&tbnh=99&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Deiffel%2Btower%2Bsmugmug%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DG
That's an Eiffel tower search via google image search.
Try eiffel tower smugmug and see.
So it appears that they do find them.... no?
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What I was looking for was (and others correct me if I am wrong) was a definitive statement why this wasn't working. You finally just gave one: Google Image Search will not index SmugMug. I think the frustration people were having was that it took a long time in this thread before you admitted this to be the case.
Apparently, Google Image Search does find a few images on SmugMug, but it is very hit and miss. As I posted above, it finds zero on my site. IMO, every single image of mine should be indexable on Google Image Search. I'm sure others here will agree.
I'll try and find out if there's more we can do. Thanks!
But this is interesting, no?
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2123/2260473335_cd77ec9986.jpg%3Fv%3D0&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/51904530%40N00/2260473335&usg=__1ZVX9sQj02nt-TXM7bCiaesm46o=&h=333&w=500&sz=74&hl=en&start=6&um=1&tbnid=BRUIkMoby0ANzM:&tbnh=87&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbodiam%2Bcastle%2Bmoon%2Briver%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN
http://flickr.com/photos/51904530@N00/2260473335
and my SmugMug account:
http://images.google.com/images?q=bodiam%20castle%20moon%20river&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/gallery/1340265_zT6FF/1/24004041_P23jU#24004041_P23jU
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Andy, I went through 30 SEPRs for "smugmug Eiffel tower" search term on http://images.google.com and here's my initial conclusion:
Most of the images indexed by Google were on the first page of the SmugMug gallery or they were a result of a direct link from a forum/blog. I saw one result with an image being on a second page of a gallery and my guess it was also a result of direct linking or some other unnatural path. I consider a natural path being a link on the source site itself not hard-linked externally.
Site's architecture should be such that once google has knowledge about a site it finds ALL it's content/pages through internal links. In other words all pages on a site must have a natural path to them that google can find and they should be originating from a home-page or a sitemap of some sort. I run over 20 domains and that's my experience so far -- home page links are the most valuable since homepage is what google pools most frequently (I watch my server logs and can attest to that).
As I mentioned in my post --> Google has issues with SmugMug pagination mechanism due to duplicate titles. All pages on a site must have a unique page title and header -- even paginated content should change title/header.
- HTH!
Can you please explain - your search of google images for 'bodiam castle moon river' is surely unrealistic ? If I just search google images using 'bodiam castle' your image is 8 pages down, not great considering some of the results that precede it
If I search google images for 'priddy fair' I get one image on page 3 and then nothing - I looked down to page 15 and gave up. I have 102 images keyworded 'priddy fair' and around 200 'priddy fair yyyy' .
'priddy fair caroline shipsey' returns 2 pages, the first 8 images are actually 'priddy fair' then 16 pbase images that were not keyworded but just in a gallery called 'priddy fair 2006' with a total of 16 images. So there is obviously an inconsistency just in this respect.
Are you saying that we should only expect google images to return a result if the search term includes our name/website name. Sorry I'm not so techie as the others here but I'm a classic example of why this isn't working properly.
I hope you can unravel something from the foregoing information that will assist in resolving this.
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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1) Google Image Search has a very hard, if not impossible, time of indexing images on the SmugMug site or any personal domains on the site.
2) #1 is a result of how SmugMug pages are currently designed.
3) To give Google Image Search the best shot at indexing images on SmugMug, you have to post the image elsewhere, such as to a blog, forum, or other photo hosting site. This only works on a per-image basis, not gallery-wide, so if you want to give Google Image Search the best chance at indexing 100 images in a gallery, you'll have to post those 100 images elsewhere.
4) SmugMug is aware of this situation, but has not made any indication that they will definitively work to correct this so that all images are indexable by Google Image Search.
Is that a fair assessment?
I think that sums it up pretty well, thank you.
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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Appreciate it!
The reason I came into this thread with questions, (one who has not signed up for a single thing yet except for the 14 day trial), is because I saw this thread and the problems with SEO.
Naturally, ... it somewhat concerned me.
You mentioned earlier today, that you were the one who started this thread and you do read it. Thats great!
But, ... this thread was started back in Oct. of 2006 and almost immediately there were concerns about the lack of SEO from the members, and here it is Feb. of 2009 and those same concerns from members still exist.
So, ... I am just wondering how important SEO is to SM?
It certainly is a concern to many members it seems!
Of course, I would never rely on search engines to pull in a lot of business for me. I rely on my marketing efforts directly to the consultants/designers for that.
But still, a site with good SEO will often help, ... and I am just wondering what SM's "sure fire" answer is to this problem.
I know that I am new in here, (hope that I have not offended anyone), and jumped right into the fire right from the start, ... but I could not help but noticing this thread and how long it has been going along and nothing much has changed.
After all of this, ... I think that SmugMug will still do me just fine as long as I rely on my own marketing, ... so I probably will sign up soon for the Pro account.
Michael
Yes it is - it was just an example, Caroline.
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Michael.
I started this thread to get the community's additions to a wiki page I made. I hope this thread lives to 100yrs old! I started this thread because this is a very important topic to me. I think a lot of this stuff is time and energy related. I have put a ton of time and energy into my online presence and I get found.
Can SmugMug do more? I don't know for sure, but we are always looking for ways to improve and I hope we can here, also
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Thanks Andy. I don't think you need to be able to personally replicate something before you can accept that there is a problem, especially if other users have been providing objective evidence to support this. The important thing is that Smugmug is now offering to find out WHY exactly some users photos are not being found by Google. I think that this is what we have all been hoping and expecting Smugmug to do - to try to investigate and elicit the problem and then to make steps to rectify it.
Here is an example of a gallery that I think SHOULD be found:
http://www.lookingglassphotography.com.au/gallery/4353182_hDz2w#256416510_57BrC
It is the very first gallery that I uploaded onto my site a year ago and has consistently had at least about 1000-2000 hits per month since then. If you search for "world laser championships terrigal 2008" in Google Search, it appears on the first page. However, if you search for the same thing in Google Image Search, a total of 249 images are found, of which 2 of those are mine (one on page 4, and one on page 10), NEITHER of which are relevant results relating to the search query - one is a photo of Hong Kong from my home page, and another is a photo of my portrait in my bio. So it isn't even that the photos are ranked lowly, but that they're not seen by Google Image at all.
Here is another example from Hainan Island in China:
http://www.lookingglassphotography.com.au/gallery/4465016_RaM8P#262636256_Di3bP
If you search for "hainan island china", my site doesn't appear in the first 20 pages of either Google Search or Google Image Search. The real world implications of this is that my partner had uploaded ONE photo of the Sanya Hilton resort onto her flickr account. She was contacted by a tourism agency and made a sale on that. I had uploaded over 30 images and had no enquiries, even though my photo was almost identical to hers (and at a higher resolution as well). I can say for sure how the agency came to find her photo, but if you do any image search on Google Image, many of the results are from Flickr accounts.
As for my comment about Smugmug not addressing this issue, I said this because from Feb 3rd until Feb 14th, there was no input from Smugmug in this thread, despite many people here asking for a discussion. I know none of us expect Smugmug to answer to every post, but please bear in mind that this is one of the 2nd most read threads in the Smugmug Pro Sales Support thread, and is an important issue especially to the paying Pro customers of Smugmug. Also, I searched back to July last year on the CEO's blog and could find no mention of this issue - can you please provide us with a direct link?
Lastly, you have illustrated several times now the results of searching for things like "'bodiam castle moon river" or "eifel tower smug mug", but these are obviously not realistic searches. Who is the target audience that would ever enter these as search queries?
Website: www.lookingglassphotography.com.au
Blog: http://lookingglassphotography.posterous.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LookingGlassPho
Shrekie, and all - please allow us some time now. I've set in motion some discussion at SmugMug. And now, I'm off to WPPI till Thursday and won't have much time to check in to this thread, thanks.
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Thanks for the clarification Andy. Much appreciated. I think it is useful to know that "eiffel tower smugmug" returns results with GIS where "eiffel tower" doesn't. On the other hand, if I search for "world laser championships terrigal 2008 smugmug", or "world laser championships terrigal 2008 looking glass photography", none of the relevant images from my site shows up.
Please know that I really love Smugmug and that I am passionate about this issue only because I want both my website and Smugmug to be better. Smugmug's customer service as well as all the brilliant folks in Dgrin are really second to none, and I had been praising this company to many friends, family and fellow photographers, even on my Flickr site:) With most other issues so far, Smugmug has usually gone the extra mile to try and improve their service for their customers, and I am hoping that they will continue to do so with this issue as well.
As much as I would like to, I can't really recommend Smugmug to other photographers who are considering signing up for a Pro account until the SEO issue is attended to, so hopefully it will be fixed soon.
Thanks for setting things in motion at Smugmug and escalating this issue Andy. Much appreciated.
Website: www.lookingglassphotography.com.au
Blog: http://lookingglassphotography.posterous.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LookingGlassPho
As requested, here's another good example:
Within the brackets is my exact search term. I used quotes to illustrate an exact search (whereas searches without quotes are considered "natural" searches).
{"creepy baby doll" photo}
returns this on Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22creepy+baby+doll%22+photo&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7GGIH_en
I'm 3rd one down after 2 flickr results on the SERP.
In Google Image Search:
http://images.google.com/images?ndsp=18&um=1&hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&rlz=1I7GGIH_en&q=%22creepy+baby+doll%22+photo&start=0&sa=N
7 SERPs, and not one have a photo from my gallery. I also have the "safe search" turned off.
I hope this is a good example for you and helps you and the SmugMug crew.
Talk to ya soon!