3 replies to this topic

[rustybrick]

http://insidesearch....ights-with.html

Any thoughts on this recent Google blog post?

[DonnaFontenot]

My thought process on this particular change:

Image Search landing page quality signals. [launch codename “simple”] This is an improvement that analyzes various landing page signals for Image Search. We want to make sure that not only are we showing you the most relevant images, but we are also linking to the highest quality source pages.

Sounds like Panda for Images. That makes me worry that if you own an image and a "higher quality" site uses it, you'll no longer get your image shown in the image serps. Similar to the situation where content from pandalized sites were being outranked by the exact same content from scraper sites. Original content should never be usurped by another site either because Google thinks the other site is higher quality or because Google has demoted your own site to lower than low quality sites.

If the content (text, image, whatever) is public domain, sure, show me the content from the highest quality site if that makes you happy, Google, but if the content is owned by someone, show it to me from their site only.

My thought process on this particular change:

Improvements to image size signal. [launch codename “matter”] This is an improvement to how we use the size of images as a ranking signal in Image Search. With this change, you’ll tend to see images with larger full-size versions.

Takeaway 1: If you want to rank better for images, make them bigger.
Takeaway 2: Bigger images get scraped more often, so now you can expect a "higher quality site" to steal the image and outrank you.

[EGOL]

I agree with what they say about cleaning up image search. Lots of people were stealing my images and most of those thieves have been kicked out of image search leaving images on my server as the only instance of them in most image SERPs. They have done a really good job in the high volume image SERPs and I assume that the longtail image SERPs will be cleaned up soon too.

The result... they have decreased the ability of other people to mooch image search traffic with stolen images... and that increases the diversity of images in each image SERP.

I am happy about this.

I started a thread about this a few weeks ago...
http://www.cre8asite...l=&fromsearch=1

Edited by EGOL, 06 January 2012 - 09:48 AM.

[iamlost]

You don't want to get me going on image search!

I see this as a smart marketing move by Google. It will keep the conversation going with a monthly 'approved' change log and allow them to direct if not control the conversation. And giving each change a 'public' code name!!! Sheer genius.
Free*
Free Manure!
Free Ripe Manure!!!
Free Ripe Hot Manure!!!
* for some existential definition of same, several terms and conditions apply, acceptance of sticky everlasting data strings implied...

Despite my facetious bit above I think this is very smart on Google's part. I also think that paying much attention to the monthly announcements would be counterproductive for most webdevs; a distraction from getting on with their own business.