Google Image Search results poor

gregschneider

Joined: 2005-05-06
Posts: 51
Posted: Tue, 2013-02-26 22:53

For well over a year I had almost all my images indexed on Google's image search. Over the last few weeks or so, it seems that none of my gallery images are indexed. The web pages are, but none of the images appear to be there any longer. Some static images that are in directories rather than on a page are indexed, but what matters, the gallery images, no longer show up in Google's search results. I do have sitemaps submitted to Google, and as I mentioned, all the pages themselves seem indexed.

Any ideas? Visitors finding me via Google is one of the key drivers of traffic for me. Not sure if this coincided with the new Google image search design.

 
tempg

Joined: 2005-12-17
Posts: 1857
Posted: Tue, 2013-02-26 23:49

Don't know. A link to site would help.
Google Images recently changed anyway and will likely no longer be a major driver of traffic to your site.

 
gregschneider

Joined: 2005-05-06
Posts: 51
Posted: Tue, 2013-02-26 23:52

Yes, for sure: www.gschneiderphoto.com

 
tempg

Joined: 2005-12-17
Posts: 1857
Posted: Wed, 2013-02-27 16:28

There aren't many photos in your gallery, so it looks like all are accounted for in Google Images.

Also, you might want to add Options -Indexes to the htaccess file in your root directory (to prevent access to pages like http://www.gschneiderphoto.com/pics/ ).

 
gregschneider

Joined: 2005-05-06
Posts: 51
Posted: Wed, 2013-02-27 17:04

I wonder if this is some regional Google thing going on - these are my results. I have 960 images online according to the Gallery summary.

 
tempg

Joined: 2005-12-17
Posts: 1857
Posted: Wed, 2013-02-27 17:59
gregschneider wrote:
I wonder if this is some regional Google thing going on

Nope. It's because (looking at the image you posted), you have safe search turned on.
I'd have to go back to look at your code and wording to know why, but it appears that Google doesn't consider your pics "Safe for work."

If you turn off the safe search mode, you'll see all of your images just as I do.

 
gregschneider

Joined: 2005-05-06
Posts: 51
Posted: Wed, 2013-02-27 18:01

That's extremely weird! Not even sure where to start with that.

 
micks80

Joined: 2012-04-22
Posts: 71
Posted: Wed, 2013-02-27 21:58

We are noticing the exact same issue for last 10 days, huge drop in traffic from Google imags and revenue. Our primary source of traffic was google images, looks like it might be due to some recent changes in google algorithm...We post 100+ pics on a daily pics nd the images from wordpress are showing up but it's not picking up the Gallery pics or picking up very few.

Any help would be appreciated.

Regards,
Mick

 
tempg

Joined: 2005-12-17
Posts: 1857
Posted: Wed, 2013-02-27 22:39
micks80 wrote:
huge drop in traffic from Google imags

tempg wrote:
Google Images recently changed anyway and will likely no longer be a major driver of traffic to your site.

If you do a search at Google Images, you will see the new format;this is more than likely the cause of the drop in traffic: people who just want images now have even less reason to leave Google Images and click through to your site.

 
micks80

Joined: 2012-04-22
Posts: 71
Posted: Thu, 2013-02-28 02:25
tempg wrote:
micks80 wrote:
huge drop in traffic from Google imags

tempg wrote:
Google Images recently changed anyway and will likely no longer be a major driver of traffic to your site.

If you do a search at Google Images, you will see the new format;this is more than likely the cause of the drop in traffic: people who just want images now have even less reason to leave Google Images and click through to your site.

Yes, just read a thread on Google blog about the same topic and people are backlashing Google about the recent change i.e. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca/2013/01/faster-image-search.html?commentPage=2

I really think it's a bad move for the webmasters and causing huge drops in traffic and revenue :(

Thanks,
Mick

 
gregschneider

Joined: 2005-05-06
Posts: 51
Posted: Thu, 2013-02-28 02:46

So apart from the new change to Google Images, how can I somehow convince the bots that my images are indeed SFW?

 
Alzatar
Alzatar's picture

Joined: 2013-02-28
Posts: 1
Posted: Thu, 2013-02-28 10:02

I have been facing this exact same problem with my website. Much of my traffic from Google was originally from Google images. Unfortunately, it seems that we are back to the only decent way to receive traffic with Google is text content and the quality of that content. Have you considered the possibility of blogging about your images that you upload? This may be a slow process, however I have found the long term benefits far outweigh the time invested. If you do not maintain your own blog then guest posting is always an option.

 
tempg

Joined: 2005-12-17
Posts: 1857
Posted: Thu, 2013-02-28 16:01

@micks80: That's the consequence of relying too heavily on any one platform. I never understood why people were so quick to throw everything at Google to make it happy (and are now doing the same with Facebook). Don't be fooled: Google is not there for you as a webmaster; Google is a business that is looking to profit from others' content on the web. I won't get into the debate on how "good" or ethical it is, but this should be (yet another) wakeup call.

@gregschneider: Hopefully someone else will chime in, because I have no idea. I stopped allowing Google to index images on sites I manage/design years ago, so this has never been an issue for me.

@Alzatar: To me, the bigger point is that people are way too comfortable revolving their entire strategies around a third party (eg Google, Facebook). That's always a recipe for disaster (imo) because it subjects you to someone else's whims and fancies. I know that many rely on that traffic for revenue (mostly from Google Adsense, which, of course, is more about Google's profits than yours), but finance 101 says "diversify your portfolio."

To me, the whole thing is basically the same kind of logic as beginning photographers who shoot 8 hours for $50+lunch because "something's better than nothing." At some point, if the masses stop shooting for free, the market improves for everyone; likewise, if enough people stop letting Google profit and build their brand on your back, Google will change it back to a method that supports websites. May be wishful thinking, but true nonetheless.

Anyway, to the original point of this thread, if anyone is seeing a drop in traffic from Google Images, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're no longer indexed in Google Images--and it doesn't mean that anything is wrong with Gallery or the Gallery code for your site; it's just a change in the way Google Images works.

 
micks80

Joined: 2012-04-22
Posts: 71
Posted: Thu, 2013-02-28 17:56
Quote:
@micks80: That's the consequence of relying too heavily on any one platform. I never understood why people were so quick to throw everything at Google to make it happy (and are now doing the same with Facebook). Don't be fooled: Google is not there for you as a webmaster; Google is a business that is looking to profit from others' content on the web. I won't get into the debate on how "good" or ethical it is, but this should be (yet another) wakeup call.

Google has been the main search provider and most new site needs to rely on it to be successful unless you have a VC funding and lot of marketing $$$ to make your site popular amongst the masses. Anyways, can we talk about what can be done to resolve/mitigate this risk?

Few wordpress plugins have come-up to stop some of the hotlinking and other related issues i.e. IMGUARD.

Fanshare.com came up with this smart and interesting implementation i.e. http://goo.gl/owaa4

Does someone has the expertise to spend some time and come up with that kind of a mod? I am ready to contribute some $$$ for the dev time and I am sure few others will do so as well.

Cheers,
Mick

 
tempg

Joined: 2005-12-17
Posts: 1857
Posted: Thu, 2013-02-28 18:16
micks80 wrote:
I am ready to contribute some $$$ for the dev time

You can see if anyone bites: http://galleryproject.org/forum/65

 
Billy Jones

Joined: 2013-03-04
Posts: 1
Posted: Mon, 2013-03-04 16:10
gregschneider wrote:
For well over a year I had almost all my images indexed on Google's image search. Over the last few weeks or so, it seems that none of my gallery images are indexed. The web pages are, but none of the images appear to be there any longer. Some static images that are in directories rather than on a page are indexed, but what matters, the gallery images, no longer show up in Google's search results. I do have sitemaps submitted to Google, and as I mentioned, all the pages themselves seem indexed.

Any ideas? Visitors finding me via Google is one of the key drivers of traffic for me. Not sure if this coincided with the new Google image search design.

same here

 
micks80

Joined: 2012-04-22
Posts: 71
Posted: Mon, 2013-03-04 18:22

One other interesting pattern I have been noticing is that if I filter the results for last 24 hours, I can see the stories indexed under 'search' but not under 'images'. The 'images' show almost zero images indexed in the last 24 hours. Any ideas what could be causing it?

Thanks,
Mick

 
xtuners

Joined: 2010-11-04
Posts: 20
Posted: Tue, 2013-03-05 20:38

Hi! My site has a problem again. I was just fine with a 3.0.2 version. Now I run the 3.0.4 version and have this problem.

My images are indexed in Google ..most of them. BUT .. if you make the image search and open an image in google it looks just fine (using the option "View original image") , if you decide to use the button "Visit Page" , you get redirected to my site, but a completely different image is displayed ..sometimes not even from the same album. This happens with every image in my albums. I also get this "dummy dummy dummy" as some sort of description under each image in google search . See attached image. Does anyone know how to fix all the issues? My site is here : www.xtuners.com/gallery

 
tempg

Joined: 2005-12-17
Posts: 1857
Posted: Fri, 2013-03-15 14:00

EVERYONE: As stated above, GOOGLE IMAGES HAS CHANGED. IF YOU WANT IT BACK THE WAY IT WAS, YOU'LL NEED TO CONTACT GOOGLE AND HOPE THEY CARE ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY. Gallery cannot help you get it back the way it was.

xtuners wrote:
I was just fine with a 3.0.2 version. Now I run the 3.0.4 version and have this problem.

I don't yet have any evidence that this has anything to do with the version of Gallery that you're using; maybe, but, right now, I doubt it.

xtuners wrote:
if you decide to use the button "Visit Page" , you get redirected to my site, but a completely different image is displayed ..sometimes not even from the same album

Not a Gallery issue. Google is accessing the images using the perm urls. My guess is that maybe you had a Gallery install (maybe a test install?) and later started over--AFTER Google had already indexed the original images. If you did that, it would change the perm urls and result in what you're seeing happen now--unless and until you tell Google/Bing/etc that you've made changes to what's being displayed at that url.

xtuners wrote:
I also get this "dummy dummy dummy" as some sort of description under each image in google search

That's coming from your code; since the display is set to "none," my guess is that it's a preload that you need to edit:

<div style="display:none">
<a href="/gallery/var/albums/Honda-Plasmascheiben-Plasma-Glow-Dials/honda_civic_6g/Honda-Civic-6G-LED-needles.jpg?m=1362777878" class="g-fullsize-link" rel="shadowbox[Honda Civic 6G]" title="Honda-Civic-6G-LED-needles"> dummy </a>
<a href="/gallery/var/albums/Honda-Plasmascheiben-Plasma-Glow-Dials/honda_civic_6g/Honda-Civic-6G-LED-g%D0%B0uge-needles.jpg?m=1362777878" class="g-fullsize-link" rel="shadowbox[Honda Civic 6G]" title="Honda-Civic-6G-LED-gаuge-needles"> dummy </a>
<a href="/gallery/var/albums/Honda-Plasmascheiben-Plasma-Glow-Dials/honda_civic_6g/Honda-Civic-Plasma-Tacho-2.jpg?m=1347900454" class="g-fullsize-link" rel="shadowbox[Honda Civic 6G]" title="Honda-Civic-Plasma-Tacho-2.jpg"> dummy </a>
</div>
 
JakeJohnsonster

Joined: 2013-01-17
Posts: 24
Posted: Sat, 2013-03-16 10:36

I'm not sure. I also experienced a traffic drop. But, Google changes their agorithm all teh time. And, they may have changed their algorithm at about the same time that many of us upgraded to 3.04. There may be some subtle difference in SEO optimization that changes the way Google ranks Gallery3 pages.

I don't remember when I upgraded to 3.04, but, I saw my traffic drop on or about 3/5/13 (so, it is rough to say whether it was a change in SEO in 3.04 or a change in Google's algorithm and how they display the results) :

[IMG]http://easyimghost.com/PhotoSharing/t8472_Untitled.jpg[/IMG]

 
tempg

Joined: 2005-12-17
Posts: 1857
Posted: Sat, 2013-03-16 19:12

This will likely be my last comment on this topic, but:

@JakeJohnsonster: I don't know that recent changes to the algorithm are anywhere close to as significant as the changes to the way Google Images displays and links images. Users no longer need to click through to your site. Just visit Google Images and see the new format.

A quick internet search will give a ton of comments and discussions on the changes.

One of the many: http://blog.dreamstime.com/2013/02/04/google-images-new-layout-how-this-impacts-photographers-and-webmasters_art38649

 
bigu_c
bigu_c's picture

Joined: 2007-10-28
Posts: 421
Posted: Tue, 2013-04-02 01:12