Comments on: Check if Your Images Appear on Google Image Search

By: medyum

medyum — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:51:53 +0000

Now, I do like traffic so don’t get me wrong but what if I don’t want traffic from people searching images? As in, I don’t want them searching for them and likely snagging them for their own use, whatever that may be.

I’m on WordPress. What exactly do I need to do to block image searches? Use small words if possible.

By: Abhishek

Abhishek — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:02:27 +0000

Previously I used to just type my domain name and search in google image search…Now I know what exactly I have to do…thnks for the post…

By: jai

jai — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 06:13:36 +0000

my blog is not appearing in image search result, i need to work on it

By: Anish K.S

Anish K.S — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:23:30 +0000

Daniel, is there any relation between htacces files(deny directory view) and robots.txt

By: bali villas

bali villas — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 08:19:14 +0000

Don’t forget to add ALT tag for your images.

By: oka suyasa

oka suyasa — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:26:27 +0000

Here is a quick check that you can perform to find that out. Just head to Google, and click on the `Images link on the top left corner. That will take you to the Image Search. Now you just need to type on the search bar `site:yourdomain.com`.

By: Vids

Vids — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:59:17 +0000

How can I update my site images in Google images search can any body suggestion?

By: beeravolu Mahendar Reddy

beeravolu Mahendar Reddy — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:44:25 +0000

Hi this mahendar how to upload my image imn google image serch place

By: Liam

Liam — Thu, 22 May 2008 11:53:28 +0000

It is recommended to avoid using an underscore (_) in filenames/urls as it is less likely to be seen as a word separator by different search engines than a hyphen (-).
If you have 2 images ‘water_sports.jpg’ and ‘water-sports.jpg’ then some search engines will return the first one only if a user searches for “water_sports” and not in searches for “water” or “sport”.
I’m not necessarily telling anyone to go back and change filenames that are already on the web.
This is just some best practice advice to keep in mind in future when naming files.

By: SystemsThinker

SystemsThinker — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:00:55 +0000

Google does find some images from my site, but not nearly as many as it should. I’m not sure why it doesn’t find more.

By: Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:48:14 +0000

@Nancypants, just add this line to your robots.txt file

“Disallow: /wp-content/uploads/”

@Aseem, that is pretty normal I think, Google will only index some of your images. I believe this is related to the number of backlinks, the relevancy of the articles, images and their tags and attributes.

Just make sure that this number is growing over time.

By: Aseem Kishore

Aseem Kishore — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:37:37 +0000

Hey Daniel,

Any way to tell if all your images are being indexed? It shows I have 300 or so indexed, but I have well over 2000 pictures. I went to Google Webmaster Tools and all of my directories holding pictures are not being blocked.

Thanks

By: nancypants

nancypants — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:47:39 +0000

Now, I do like traffic so don’t get me wrong… but what if I don’t want traffic from people searching images? As in, I don’t want them searching for them and likely snagging them for their own use, whatever that may be.

I’m on WordPress. What exactly do I need to do to block image searches? Use small words if possible. LOL

By: Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:40:52 +0000

@Ahilosu, maybe it is because the overall trust level of your site. As soon as you gain more backlinks and trust from Google you should start to see the images indexed.

@Rob, there is nothing you can do for those differences between search engines. If you check the number of backlinks to a site with Google and Yahoo you will also see a huge discrepancy, but this is related to each of their algos.

By: Rob O.

Rob O. — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 19:44:38 +0000

Given that the number of images that Google has indexed is so much lower than the results at Yahoo!, do you have any suggestions for what needs to be tweaked?

And do you think I’m right in assuming that my robots.txt must not be a significant part of the problem since Yahoo!, MSN, & Altavista are all indexing okay? I sorta figured the robots.txt thing is an “either it’s working or it’s not” kinda thing. If Google is indexing some of the images in a container, but not others, that doesn’t seem like a robots.txt problem… does it?

By: Ahilosu

Ahilosu — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:50:10 +0000

So can you think of any other reason for my images not being indexed?
I doubt it’s the theme I use, the Deep Blue that you created (and i highly appreciate) , so it has to be something I’ve done (either the update that I’ve mentioned above)

By: Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:36:04 +0000

@Ahilosu, I never heard about Google updating the image index twice a year. It is an interesting theory though.

By: Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:17:35 +0000

@Rob O, I would mind about differences between Google and Yahoo, even for normal results (non images) they sometimes present significant changes.

Just monitor how Google is responding to the tweaks you make on the images and on related factors.

@bali, not sure if this will affect your ROI, but it should bring some extra visitors.

@Scott, for photographers this might be especially important eh?

@Dave, my pleasure.

By: David at DavidNordmark.com

David at DavidNordmark.com — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:59:34 +0000

Hmmmm, I checked out my site using the “site” command, and none of my images appeared. Looks like I’m going to have to check my robots.txt file. Thanks for the tip, I would have never thought of this.

– Dave

By: Scott Fillmer

Scott Fillmer — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:25:09 +0000

I look at this quite often since most of my images are from my photography. About impossible to keep up with all of them and where they are but nice to be able to look itup.

By: bali

bali — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:18:22 +0000

I think I should optimize my villa picture to get more traffic.

But, is this inscrease my ROI ? If visitor come to my site to find villa pictures. Not to rent them ?

By: Rob O.

Rob O. — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:42:18 +0000

I’ve been grappling with an issue on this for some time now. When I do a Google image search on my site, I get a bit less than 100 hits. That’s not nearly enough. Yahoo! finds 445!

But more importantly, there are several versions of my site logo that don’t show up at all and given the file names and such, they should certainly be there.

– All of my images referenced anywhere in code have accompanying ALT & TITLE info.

– Most have descriptive filenames like domesticated_dede.jpg

– Obviously, my robots.txt file must be reasonably correct since some images are being indexed.

– I routinely submit an updated sitemap XML file to Google Webmaster site tools.

Now, here’s some weirdness… One of the files I would hope to be on the top of the search list is 2dolphins_logo.jpg. This file isn’t even being indexed by either Google or Yahoo! even tho it’s in the same folder where other indexed images are also stored, but MSN Live search does find it. Altavista doesn’t find that logo file, but does catch another one 2d_paypal_logo.jpg that’s in the same folder.

Anybody else scratching their noggins? I’m confounded over the discrepancies between the various search engines. But I would’ve expected Google to be better or more thorough than the rest yet it isn’t…

By: Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:50:24 +0000

@Patrix, yeah I assume the search with that filter will remove images hosted on other websites.

Try searching for related terms, without the site: factor, to see if they will come up.

By: Patrix

Patrix — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:46:22 +0000

Strangely that search in Google brings up images hosted on your webserver only. I normally host my images in Flickr and then use them in my posts (to reduce bandwidth load). Those images don’t seem to pop up when you do this search. But I still receive traffic from those images.

By: Keith

Keith — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:31:14 +0000

@ Daniel

Thanks. It has been three weeks now, my traffic is in the toilet (it is a wallpaper site). I will contact them, thanks.

By: Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:27:25 +0000

@Keith, first thing would be to wait some more days to see if this is a momentary glitch from their part.

If after one week all the images are still gone, and if you have not changed anything on the blog, I would contact them to let they know about it via the Webmaster Central.

By: Keith

Keith — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:25:15 +0000

Daniel

Any suggestions if all of your images were listed in Google images, but all of a sudden, one day they all disappeared?

By: Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:06:19 +0000

@Mr Cooker, yeah I think many people have that problem as well.

@Rajaie, gadget and product related blogs definitely will benefit more from image search traffic.

By: Rajaie

Rajaie — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:21:47 +0000

This brings you the most traffic when you have a gadget related blog.

By: MrCooker

MrCooker — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:17:37 +0000

Good thing you mentioned this Daniel, just found out my images arent getting index. Time to solve the problem.

By: Daniel Scocco

Daniel Scocco — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:51:46 +0000

@Siddharth, let me know the results.

By: Siddharth

Siddharth — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:40:18 +0000

Good tips Daniel, It can really help to bring traffic from the Google in this way to. I will check it and try it out. 😀