Image Searches Never Find My Smugmug images. My other sites always get found.

Brody · July 26, 2008

Over the years I've had a number of sites, blogs, photo albums, and the images I've had posted there have always been found. In fact there's one that I quit using because I like the look and ease of SmugMug site better, but I can post ten images there and the same ones on SmugMug, and those get found and display on the image search results, but not the SmugMug uploads. This is true of Google, Yahoo, AllTheWeb, and many others engines.

I must say that the engines find the web results, I just looked and there's a couple hundred, and I checked a few engines... All had decent web results, but not one image. BTW, this has been true whether I'm using a custom domain on SmugMug or not. I'm really quite puzzled and would like for them to be found :scratch

Another equally if not more important issue... All of the results show up as pasted below. It would be nice if they had the photo description or even tags if must be, but with the room limitations, all web findings list out exactly the same on the search engines findings, so you can't tell what you've found, thus making the image search even more important.

John Brody Photography - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- powered ...

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class="j hc">The ultimate in photo sharing. Easily create online photo albums. Share, store, organize and print.
johnbrody.smugmug.com/gallery/4564914_bCqbF/3 - 32k - <NOBR>Cached - Similar pages - Note this</NOBR>

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

I could use your help on this - My friends and family keep bitching at me.

Here's my stuff - www.johnbrody.com

Andy · July 27, 2008

Google Image search will index and find SmugMug images that you've linked in blog posts, forums, etc, try it

For the rest, here's my tips page:
http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/Maximize+Search+Engine+Findability

Brody · July 27, 2008

Andy wrote:

Google Image search will index and find SmugMug images that you've linked in blog posts, forums, etc, try it

For the rest, here's my tips page:
http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/Maximize+Search+Engine+Findability

I've seldom posted in forums except here when I need your guidance. Can you recommend a few that work well so I don't do annoying things like this:

Thanks for your help, John Brody

Brody · July 29, 2008

Andy wrote:

Google Image search will index and find SmugMug images that you've linked in blog posts, forums, etc, try it

For the rest, here's my tips page:
http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/Maximize+Search+Engine+Findability

I went through your info above, and I have a few comments / questions.

Most importantly, while I understand the POWERED BY SMUGMUG line that shows up in search results is a pretty standard and acceptable business promo tool and a good business practice, the rest of the stuff "The ultimate in photo sharing. Easily create online photo albums. Share, store, organize and print" dominates the entire search finding and eliminates the posibility of your images being identified by the person searching when found in Google or anywhere else. There must be a way for the member to get SOME of their specific data in there, or it's almost pointless to do the keywords thing or description. As it stands now, even if a 1,000 web search hits are finding photos inside SmugMug, and listed by Google or whoever, it may as well only be 1, because they all look the same except for the code string --- "johnbrody.smugmug.com/gallery/4564914_bCqbF/3" --- which is useless to a searcher. The following is the Description and Keywords for this photo I put in SmugMug of a wonderful woman that helped keep me alive for a year in Vietnam, but not a word of it shows in any searches I've done.

"This kind woman in Vietnam kept me booted, clothed and rested so all I had to worry about was when we got the call for a flight was weapons and liftoff... Kind of like a firetruck heading out... edit
keywords: woman flight vietnam weapons kind liftoff john brody photography · edit

I did a Google and Yahoo Image Search on Mike Lane and Barb Gates, and find almost no results, and the ones that are there are pretty much all little thumbnails. Comparatively, I also just ran a search for an old Image site I designed and set up for a client 3 years ago on various 20th century artists and 6 of the 21 images that show up on Page 1 in Image Search for a particular artist I put in are from that site, and they link to full 1600 by 1200 images along with the image description and the site name. It also shows up on page 1 and two of the "web search" as listings number 7, 13 and 16... I guess I'm just puzzled as to what's causing such a huge difference and what I can do to fix it. BTW, none of those images were posted in blogs, forums, or anywhere else - They are just sitting on the site with a name and description, all of which shows up on the search results display in google.

Funny... I just did a search under "John Brody Photography" in Google, and the only SmugMug related finding that hasn't been covered up by the deadly "The ultimate in photo sharing. Easily create online photo albums. Share, store, organize and print" line is this post right here that Google has found since I posted it last night. Man that's a quick hit by Google. They've already found it and sucked it into their cache to live on forever. No wonder Google is becoming King.

Anyway, if there's any advise you can give me as to how to get my descriptions to display instead of that line above, I'd really really appreaciate it - a hundred findings that all look identical don't help much.

Thanks for your help, John Brody

Brody · August 4, 2008

I'm not sure what happened here, but I never got a reply or suggestions on how to tweak things to address the situation discussed above.

Looking forward to some feedback - Thanks, John

Andy · August 8, 2008

Brody wrote:

I'm not sure what happened here, but I never got a reply or suggestions on how to tweak things to address the situation discussed above.

Looking forward to some feedback - Thanks, John

All you gotta do is "bump" it

Answering now.

Andy · August 8, 2008

Brody wrote:

Anyway, if there's any advise you can give me as to how to get my descriptions to display instead of that line above, I'd really really appreaciate it - a hundred findings that all look identical don't help much.

Thanks for your help, John Brody

I don't have much more than what I put on my search tips page, John - that's all the stuff I've done and you can see the results I get. Try searching for

westchester senior portrait

Brody · August 8, 2008

Andy wrote:

I don't have much more than what I put on my search tips page, John - that's all the stuff I've done and you can see the results I get. Try searching for

westchester senior portrait

Dear god.... Poor Nikolai and I have exchanged a few thousand words, and even he, after my 5th massive description with the side by side attached, he realized that something is wrong or a setting is off or something. How can his show up with all the detail and I display only an advertising string??? Did you look at the side by side? For them to show up so differently is impossible if all other factors are the same. I even talked to my former staff at Fox where I had IT under my umbrella and they say it's impossible. Nikolai and I are adding 2 + 2 and he's getting 4 and I'm getting 5.... Not possible.

Sorry if I sound frustrated, but I've been in this general field for 2 decades and something just isn't right - It's some little setting I've missed or something. Can you dig a little deeper?

Thanks for your help. John

denisegoldberg · August 8, 2008

It would help if you would add a description to your bio - before the slideshow code, and in a div that is set to display: none;. That is mentioned in Andy's maximizing your findability page and in the help for the slideshow. At least the text that comes up on a search will be about you...

Do a search on my name and you'll see the text from my bio box.
Or do a view source on my home page. You'll see that text before the slideshow code.

Do a view source on yours and you only see the code.

I took a quick look at your site, and I found it interesting that you have 3 navbar entries that lead away from your site, and not to another site that helps to "push" visitors to look at your photos - Customize goes to the smugmug FAQ page, Forums goes to dgrin, and DigitalJohn goes to a "page not found" in blogger.

--- Denise

Brody · August 8, 2008

Thank you Denise for jumping in.

I've known about the View Source meta tag issue for ages, but I was trying not to bury Andy with code. But you speak my language, so that will make things easier. I've been trying, in so many words, to explain that the search engines, all of them, are picking up the 2nd of your four meta tags by default.

meta name="description" content="The ultimate in photo sharing. Easily create online photo albums. Share, store, organize and print.

I did the search on your site as you suggested, and I see that a couple of your results have variable data - I'm assuming that the "From the eyes of...." is your bio info, I'll assume so unless you tell me different, but two of your search finding have exactly what I trying for Here are two examples. They've got the detail I'm after:

from the eyes of Denise Goldberg- powered by SmugMug<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class="j hc">Up & up... Angels Landing & West Rim Trail>>> Click for other Zion National Park - April 2007 or Travel galleries.Perhaps I should call this gallery almost ...

from the eyes of Denise Goldberg- powered by SmugMug<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class="j hc">Mosaic Canyon>>> Click for other Death Valley National Park - 2007 or Travel galleries.Mosaic Canyon presents magic in rocks. It is a narrow, polished, ...

What you have is my exact goal. From the info above on the first one, your users can see that it's Angels Landing under Zion under Travel Galleries. That's a Huge difference than what I have which is the description meta tag diplayed 30 times in a repetitive list.

In a truly perfect world, since I only go one gallery category deep in my structure, and that's intentional for this sole reason, is that some of the image description I input would show because there's room for more charactors.

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
What do I do to make the Description meta tag disappear and have your type of date replace it. That's my main goal... If you help me do that I'll be one happy camper.

I'll go research the bio box info to see if that's the key, but I actually don't want bio data, just what you have.

BTW, you bailed me out of a major mess once before, and I still appreciate what you did....

Thanks much Denise, and I look forward to your feedback. John

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denisegoldberg wrote:

It would help if you would add a description to your bio - before the slideshow code, and in a div that is set to display: none;. That is mentioned in Andy's maximizing your findability page and in the help for the slideshow. At least the text that comes up on a search will be about you...

Do a search on my name and you'll see the text from my bio box.
Or do a view source on my home page. You'll see that text before the slideshow code.

Do a view source on yours and you only see the code.

--- Denise

Andy · August 8, 2008

Brody wrote:

Sorry if I sound frustrated, but I've been in this general field for 2 decades and something just isn't right - It's some little setting I've missed or something. Can you dig a little deeper?

Thanks for your help. John

Hi John - sure, we call can - but teh g00gl3 doesn't give up her s3kr3ts very easily

Seriously - I can't explain the differences, John. I'm really, really sorry

Andy · August 8, 2008

Brody wrote:

What do I do to make the Description meta tag disappear and have your type of date replace it. That's my main goal... If you help me do that I'll be one happy camper.

I'll go research the bio box info to see if that's the key, but I actually don't want bio data, just what you have.

So, several times now I've linked you to a page I made specifically for this subject. And on this page I say, add to the bio. Do it, please

denisegoldberg · August 8, 2008

Brody wrote:

I did the search on your site as you suggested, and I see that a couple of your results have variable data - I'm assuming that the "From the eyes of...." is your bio info, I'll assume so unless you tell me different, but two of your search finding have exactly what I trying for Here are two examples. They've got the detail I'm after:

from the eyes of Denise Goldberg- powered by SmugMug<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class="j hc">Up & up... Angels Landing & West Rim Trail>>> Click for other Zion National Park - April 2007 or Travel galleries.Perhaps I should call this gallery almost ...

from the eyes of Denise Goldberg- powered by SmugMug
Mosaic Canyon>>> Click for other Death Valley National Park - 2007 or Travel galleries.Mosaic Canyon presents magic in rocks. It is a narrow, polished, ...

What you have is my exact goal. From the info above on the first one, your users can see that it's Angels Landing under Zion under Travel Galleries. That's a Huge difference than what I have which is the description meta tag diplayed 30 times in a repetitive list.

</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

John -
In both cases, what you are seeing is the beginning of the gallery description. I have links to other galleries in my gallery description because a few months back I stopped using the standard category/sub-category pages. I removed the breadcrumb and my galleries all have a link in the description (but shown as English words, not HTML) that jumps back to the overall category. But in most cases the gallery description also contains words that provide a high-level overview of the photos in the gallery.

I just looked at a few of your galleries, and I don't see any gallery desriptions. You might also want to review the keywords you are using. When I looked at your keywords (at http://johnbrody.smugmug.com/keyword/), I don't see much there that describes your photos. Take a look at my keywords for a contrast - http://www.denisegoldberg.com/keyword/.

I also clicked on the photos in your blog and was more than a little surprised that you are showcasing the photos of other photographers there. I'd highly recommend adding your own photos to your blog, and adding them so that clicking on the photo leads to your gallery.

I don't know if you're interested in matching the look of your blogger blog with your smugmug site. If you are, I posted a thread on that just last week - http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=101262. Even if you're not interested in changing the look of your blog, there are a couple of posts in that thread that talk about linking to your photos.

The "From the eyes of Denise Goldberg" that you mentioned? That comes from the Page Title in my customization settings (it's near the top, just above the CSS box).

--- Denise

Andy · August 8, 2008

denisegoldberg wrote:

I just looked at a few of your galleries, and I don't see any gallery desriptions.

Google needs food. And I say this on my wiki page, too

Brody · August 8, 2008

Thanks for spotting the error - I moved DigitalJohn's address a couple days ago and forgot to change the address here.

denisegoldberg wrote:

I took a quick look at your site, and I found it interesting that you have 3 navbar entries that lead away from your site, and not to another site that helps to "push" visitors to look at your photos - Customize goes to the smugmug FAQ page, Forums goes to dgrin, and DigitalJohn goes to a "page not found" in blogger.

denisegoldberg · August 8, 2008

Brody wrote:

Thanks for spotting the error - I moved DigitalJohn's address a couple days ago and forgot to change the address here.

OK, now that link works.

But you still aren't using your own photos in your blogs. And unless you reference your smugmug site either with text links or with links in images, you are not going to drive traffic to your site or to improve your search results.

Take a look at my blog for an example. I don't have photos in all of my posts, but where there are photos shown, they do lead back to my galleries.

--- Denise

Brody · August 9, 2008

denisegoldberg wrote:

John -

I just looked at a few of your galleries, and I don't see any gallery desriptions. You might also want to review the keywords you are using. When I looked at your keywords (at http://johnbrody.smugmug.com/keyword/), I don't see much there that describes your photos. Take a look at my keywords for a contrast - http://www.denisegoldberg.com/keyword/.

I also clicked on the photos in your blog and was more than a little surprised that you are showcasing the photos of other photographers there. I'd highly recommend adding your own photos to your blog, and adding them so that clicking on the photo leads to your gallery.

--- Denise

denisegoldberg wrote:

It would help if you would add a description to your bio - before the slideshow code, and in a div that is set to display: none;. That is mentioned in Andy's maximizing your findability page and in the help for the slideshow. At least the text that comes up on a search will be about you...
--- Denise

Hi Denise,
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I apologize in advance for the length of this note, but I’ve tried to find the answers using the help guides and Dgrin but it’s either not there, buried deeply, or I’m just missing it.

I added the bio box meta description as you said, but I don't know how to test to see if it's working. I also tried to wrap it in the div code as you suggested and things started going goofy. Maybe my syntax was wrong. Is it OK without it?

I saw the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:place>Meta</st1:place> tag /bio box note many months ago, but I thought that would bury my listed image description even further. But now I'm thinking you mean when you put it in the bio box, it Replaces the default SmugMug meta tag line instead of appending to it which is what I assumed… Is that correct? That’s 90% of my problem. If that the case, can I just put in a douple space or dashes to leave room for the image descriptions?<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Related to the above paragraph, and on top of the Bio Box meta tag issue - There’s no real discussion anywhere of the Hierarchy of meta tags that I can find. For example, which takes priority, the gallery description or gallery meta tags or the same question applies to the descriptions and metas for the individual images? If that hierarchy was discussed in the help info (maybe it is but I can’t find it) then people would know where to put their efforts in their description input. <o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Again you found a big issue – I had no clue. I found a couple favorite Van Goghs with the following keywords ---- crap on lens fixed, crop3forwallpaper, leveled, denoised, custom_edit_for_my_surgeons_bitchy_husband. How’s that for a cool batch of keywords…

I only found that after you took a look at my keyword box, which I’ve never used. I ignored it because I was putting in the keywords I wanted and didn’t know the file names came into play regarding keywords. Prior services I used scrambled the file names before cementing them in the data base so the file names I used during edit were a non issue.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
I’m in the process of deleting the nonsensical keyword terms gleaned from the files names, and it’s going to be a big task, 6 hours so far. I just want to be sure on this….. will they stay away or re-insert themselves from the file names. Is there a setting that controls this? I see replace in the gallery menu and the Help area, but not rename. Is there a way to do that without messing up all the image links in use in blogs, search engines, etc? A lot of different factors come into play here.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
About your comments on the blogs linking issue… I was trying to be nice, like the work that Schmoo is doing, but again you are right. But my good intentions have gotten me these results – One person asked me to link to pictures she likes better than the ones I selected without even saying thanks, another asked why I was using his images even though he has the share option turned on and his images were solely linked back to his SM Album, and the 3rd result is the search engines have found other Smuggers images in the last two days, which is fine, but nothing for my images that are linked exactly the same. Again, the “no good deed goes unpunished” rule kicks in.<o:p></o:p>
<o:p></o:p>
Your feedback uncovered huge issues – It’s Greatly appreciated. John

Andy · August 9, 2008

Brody wrote:

will they stay away or re-insert themselves from the file names.

Yes, they'll stay this way. They'll only re-appear if you perform a photo tool (make 2nd copy, color effect, crop, etc).

denisegoldberg · August 9, 2008

Brody wrote:

I added the bio box meta description as you said, but I don't know how to test to see if it's working. I also tried to wrap it in the div code as you suggested and things started going goofy. Maybe my syntax was wrong. Is it OK without it?

If I do a view source on your page, I don't see any description in your bio box. I'm going on the assumption that your slideshow is in your bio box.

Add a div to your CSS:

#mySiteDescription {
    display: none;
}

Then, in your bio box - before the slideshow code - add this:

[B]<[/B]div id="mySiteDescription"[B]>[/B]
add any text you want here. 
add some lines of spaces too, so that your slideshow code 
isn't shown in search results
[B]<[/B]div[B]>[/B]

Brody wrote:

I saw the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:place>Meta</st1:place> tag /bio box note many months ago, but I thought that would bury my listed image description even further. But now I'm thinking you mean when you put it in the bio box, it Replaces the default SmugMug meta tag line instead of appending to it which is what I assumed… Is that correct? That’s 90% of my problem. If that the case, can I just put in a douple space or dashes to leave room for the image descriptions?

You need to stop worrying about meta tags. Just add descriptions to your galleries and add keywords to your photos. Add captions too if they make sense. Use the facilities within smugmug to tag your photos.

And link to your own photos from your blog.

If you choose to link to other photographer's photos in your blog, you really should request permission first.

--- Denise

Brody · August 9, 2008

Hi Denise,

Your assumption is correct on the slideshow being in my bio box. A least it was.

I cut and pasted the code in your note's first box into the css box in the control panel and hit save. You use the term add a div, but I'm not sure if you mean litterally a div segmant, and the syntax if so, or just paste the code you sent.

I then hit the Bio Box edit button (which FYI has always been half hidden by the slide show frame) and then I pasted the code above the slide show at the very top, and added John Brody Photography where you indicated followed by a Shift/Return, then 5 lines of spaces each ended by Shift/Return, then I hit Save or whatever it is, maybe update.

Now the slideshow has disappeared and I can't access the edit button on the bio box to undo what I did to try to figure out what went wrong. As you can see now, the galleries box or frame plus the bottom menu is covering everything.... The best laid plans..... I'd just reverse it and try to figure it out, but I can't edit it. Is there a next step?

As far as the blog thing, I guess I undestand your thoughts, but I give up. I had what I thought was a kind hearted idea, and when I ran across Schmoo doing the same thing, it reinforced it.

But the idea of me asking someone permission to do them a favor when I then have to spend my time doing that favor, and for absolutely nothing in return just seems very strange to me... When I set my own images to "Share" I do so with the knowledge that I've given permission for people to link to them... So from this point on, unless someone is a friend or asks me to display them, it ain't gonna happen.

I'm hoping your going to tell me there's and easy way to reverse what I did and then make the right thing happen... I'm clueless.

Thanks, John

denisegoldberg wrote:
If I do a view source on your page, I don't see any description in your bio box. I'm going on the assumption that your slideshow is in your bio box.

Add a div to your CSS:
#mySiteDescription {
    display: none;
}
Then, in your bio box - before the slideshow code - add this:
[B]<[/B]div id="mySiteDescription"[B]>[/B]
add any text you want here. 
add some lines of spaces too, so that your slideshow code 
isn't shown in search results
[B]<[/B]div[B]>[/B]
You need to stop worrying about meta tags. Just add descriptions to your galleries and add keywords to your photos. Add captions too if they make sense. Use the facilities within smugmug to tag your photos.

And link to your own photos from your blog.

If you choose to link to other photographer's photos in your blog, you really should request permission first.

--- Denise

denisegoldberg · August 9, 2008

Brody wrote:

Hi Denise,

Your assumption is correct on the slideshow being in my bio box. A least it was.

I cut and pasted the code in your note's first box into the css box in the control panel and hit save. You use the term add a div, but I'm not sure if you mean litterally a div segmant, and the syntax if so, or just paste the code you sent.

I then hit the Bio Box edit button (which FYI has always been half hidden by the slide show frame) and then I pasted the code above the slide show at the very top, and added John Brody Photography where you indicated followed by a Shift/Return, then 5 lines of spaces each ended by Shift/Return, then I hit Save or whatever it is, maybe update.

Now the slideshow has disappeared and I can't access the edit button on the bio box to undo what I did to try to figure out what went wrong. As you can see now, the galleries box or frame plus the bottom menu is covering everything.... The best laid plans..... I'd just reverse it and try to figure it out, but I can't edit it. Is there a next step?

John -
My apologies - there was a typo in my example, you need to close the <div> for your site description with a </div>.

You should still be able to get in to edit your bio. Go to your control panel, click on the settings tab, and in about the center, you should see Bio: change. Click on change - and you'll be able to fix it.

Brody wrote:

As far as the blog thing, I guess I understand your thoughts, but I give up. I had what I thought was a kind hearted idea, and when I ran across Schmoo doing the same thing, it reinforced it.

You started this thread by complaining that your site wasn't getting picked up by search engines. The only way a blog will help is if you link to your own site and photos.

I think that sometimes people inadvertantly leave the share button exposed. I do understand your thoughts about highlighting other photographer's work - but it is very possible that he or she wants to control the environment in which the photos are shown. I believe that it is a courtesy to ask for permission to show the photos of other people. They do own the copyright after all.

--- Denise

Brody · August 9, 2008

It's part of the way there

I added the /div and it made a bit of difference - the footer menu dropped down below the galleries, but the galleries still cover my slide show and I can't access the bio button on the home page, but that's no biggy, I can use your alternate route. But as it stands now, but slideshow is burried. you can see it's still a bit of a mess....

I've always respected the rights of other and their work - I talked to Lord V before I posted him, I even contacted Leibovitz who I've done a site for before to make sure it was ok... It's just when I saw the nature of Smugmugs great promotion tool in "Found on Smugmug" .... and please don't say anything to Schmoo, she's been so helpful and nice..... I took the concept of the approved "Share" button literally. That's over now... I'll be a Scroooogy grreeeeedy self promoting machine from now on :-))) ... (kidding of course) I understand your feelings exactly.

And to keep this post from getting any longer (I know, too late) I'll explain another day the true original source of my search complaint, because everyone has tweaked it a bit down the line and the original issue got lost or at least modified....

Thanks again, and hope to get my slideshow back :cry

Take care, John

denisegoldberg wrote:

John -
My apologies - there was a typo in my example, you need to close the <div> for your site description with a </div>.

You should still be able to get in to edit your bio. Go to your control panel, click on the settings tab, and in about the center, you should see Bio: change. Click on change - and you'll be able to fix it.

You started this thread by complaining that your site wasn't getting picked up by search engines. The only way a blog will help is if you link to your own site and photos.

I think that sometimes people inadvertantly leave the share button exposed. I do understand your thoughts about highlighting other photographer's work - but it is very possible that he or she wants to control the environment in which the photos are shown. I believe that it is a courtesy to ask for permission to show the photos of other people. They do own the copyright after all.

--- Denise

denisegoldberg · August 10, 2008

Brody wrote:

It's part of the way there I added the /div and it made a bit of difference - the footer menu dropped down below the galleries, but the galleries still cover my slide show and I can't access the bio button on the home page, but that's no biggy, I can use your alternate route. But as it stands now, but slideshow is burried. you can see it's still a bit of a mess....

Your slideshow looks ok - it's not on top of the galleries - on Firefox. The problem only seems to exist on IE.

When I do an "Edit HTML" on your page in Firefox webdev I see a <div> (without an id=) surrounding your slideshow code and I'm not sure why that is there. I also see both forms of the slideshow code, although I'm not sure why. Do you have two copies of the slideshow code in your bio box, or only one? And I have no idea if that's what's causing the problem on IE...

Hopefully one of the smug heros will jump in here.

--- Denise

Brody · August 10, 2008

denisegoldberg wrote:

Your slideshow looks ok - it's not on top of the galleries - on Firefox. The problem only seems to exist on IE.

When I do an "Edit HTML" on your page in Firefox webdev I see a <div> (without an id=) surrounding your slideshow code and I'm not sure why that is there. I also see both forms of the slideshow code, although I'm not sure why. Do you have two copies of the slideshow code in your bio box, or only one? And I have no idea if that's what's causing the problem on IE...

Hopefully one of the smug heros will jump in here.

--- Denise

Hi Denise,

I was afraid of this... I got this same issue a couple years ago. That was when I originally tried to put the Description meta in the bio box. A lot of tech support letters went around with suggested fixes, but I eventually ran out of time, and finally I just gave up and let it stay as is. But I didn't know the end result of not having the bio meta tag is that in the long run Google and every other search engine would list every finding identically showing nothing but the SmugMug Description Meta Tag, which makes the search listing useless because searchers can't tell what they've found. They have to click on all 30 to 50 lisings and see what opens up. This is the #1 issue that started this thread, not the fact you mentioned, that I wasn't being found, but that the findings are unusable. The Nikolai / Me comparative search results screen capture is linked below for your conveniece and for the conveniece of any kind soul or smug hero who knows the answer to this.

http://www.smugmug.com/photos/347641036_aW6YN-O.jpg

I originally based my layout on a step by step guide by one of the gurus when I joined a few years back - one of the owners maybe? His name is on a dozen different guides I run across all the time. I'm not positive now but I think it was a tutorial or guide by Shizam. I did a cut and paste using the guidelines with no cusomization of my own. I had seen the style on several different pages of your customers, so I decided to use a known format for simplicity's sake, plus I liked it's look. I followed the guide, did a few cuts and pastes, and voila' I was in business. I seem to remember his design had the known caveat of two identical pages for the home page and a gallery page so that you don't even know you have two different pages, but I was told it was a now issue and would have no impact on the operation of my site which seems to be tru - the duplication is transparent to me. To this day I don't know what it means.

If it would help I would be thrilled to have a home page that is only a slideshow and the menus, and a separate gallery page, if that would solve all of these ongoing issues, I just have no starting point or any clue as to how to proceed or where to start.

As it stands now I'm going to reverse the changes you and I made, because as you see my home page is pretty much unusable. The end effect of that though is that I'm back to exactly where I was 3 weeks ago when I made my original post discussing the issue. This is also why I never put in Gallery or Image descriptions and metas, because they are never found by the search engines so there is no point in doing so.

Any advice will be hugely appreciated. Thanks again, John

Andy · August 10, 2008

Brody wrote:

As it stands now I'm going to reverse the changes you and I made,

Please don't!

Andy · August 10, 2008

Brody wrote:

Any advice will be hugely appreciated. Thanks again, John

Your bio was broken because you had a DIV at the start and no closing /DIV I fixed that for you.

More to come.

Andy · August 10, 2008

So make your bio like this.

Then in your CSS do this:

#mybiotext {display: none;}

Brody · August 10, 2008

Hallelueh !!!

If all goes as it appears, a Huge thank you to Andy <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/bowdown.gif" border="0" alt="" > and Denise <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/bowdown.gif" border="0" alt="" > .... Huge!

Usually I'm listing problems, but here's what's happened so far:

- My Home Page is back to the format as designed and the error is cleared.

- Google, since two hours ago has more than doubled the findings using this string - "john brody photography" smugmug - from 31 to 68.... I know, I don't believe it either, but it's true - I simply hit refresh on the earlier search and voila' the list doubled. Further supporting this is that I didn't make some of the changes in the found listing until about 3 hours ago, a Gallery name change and a Bouguereau image added.

- More importantly, many of the New listings have detail as to galleries, images or other meaningful data, and none of them have the old default meta description.

- 3rd parties have linked to a van Gogh, a Bouguereau, and the "Another War " gallery based on the new data showing.

I could list a few more, but so far the news is all good.

One question: since we tried a few different approaches to track down this issue, is this instrucion below I got still valid? The part I'm talking about is the "add lines of spaces" tip. I thought it may be irrelevant since the code was moved inside the HTML:

<div id="mySiteDescription">
add any text you want here.
add some lines of spaces too, so that your slideshow code
isn't shown in search results
<div>

I don't want the slideshow code to be shown, of course, but I also want to leave room for the more important Gallery and Image info so I don't want the spaces to shove that info off. Any thoughts on that?

Anyway, Thank you - This is a big step in the right direction. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/thumb.gif" border="0" alt="" >

Andy wrote:

So make your bio like this.

Then in your CSS do this:

#mybiotext {display: none;}

Andy · August 10, 2008

yeah add those spaces

shfaya · November 10, 2008

Please review my meta description in my bio box. Is it sitting there corectly between <div> brakets? is there a limit of the number of letters to be typed in description?
www.mirophoto.com

Erick L · November 11, 2008

I've been here a year with text in my bio and I still get the "ultimate Photo sharing" blurb when searching for borealphoto.

Google needs food. And I say this on my wiki page, too

There's plenty of food in the captions. The only reason to add a description is if you actually want one or to remove Smugmug irrevelent text.

Regarding keywords, my galleries without them have done better then the ones with them. Worse, keyworded photos didn't direct to my site but to a Smugmug "gallery" with a bunch of random photos using the same keywords. Captions are much more important. There's a simple SEO rule that has always been and will always be true: visible content gets picked up.

BTW, I was told months ago that SM would look into proper title tags (the most important) and I'm still waiting for an answer.

Image Searches Never Find My Smugmug images. My other sites always get found.

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