Google Indexing of Images
-
Our site is experiencing an issue with indexation of images. The site is real estate oriented. It has 238 listings with about 1190 images. The site submits two version (different sizes) of each image to Google, so there are about 2,400 images. Only several hundred are indexed.
Can adding Microdata improve the indexation of the images?
Our site map is submitting images that are on no-index listing pages to Google. As a result more than 2000 images have been submitted but only a few hundred have been indexed. How should the site map deal with images that reside on no-index pages? Do images that are part of pages that are set up as "no-index" need a special "no-index" label or special treatment?
My concern is that so many images that not indexed could be a red flag showing poor quality content to Google.
Is it worth investing in correcting this issue, or will correcting it result in little to no improvement in SEO?
Thanks, Alan
-
I am chiming in a year late but there is just one thing I am not sure I understand. Why would you want to index images on no-index pages? What are these pages that you want to be no-indexed in the first place? If you do not want these pages to be found when searching in Google, why would you want some of the content, like images, be found instead?
I am with Michael and recommend that you fix the sitemap. I am also curious to know what has happened in the past year. Have your issues resolved? Have your SEO improved?
-
I would definitely update that sitemap. If your sitemap is telling Google one thing, and the pages themselves are contradicting the sitemap, AND it's happening thousands of times--that's a negative quality signal to Google, and could affect all sorts of things, from crawl budget to indexation to rankings.
ALT tags are worth fixing as well. That's really the #1 clue Google has to what the images are about. (Other clues: the image filename, and the page title, if it's the main image on the page). Here, I'm presuming that the images are ones you hope to have show up in image search results (otherwise why would you bother creating an image sitemap?)...in which case, you really, REALLY need to put the ALT text on them.
-
Apparently our site map submits images to Google even when they are on pages that are marked as no index.
The result is that only about 250 out of 2250 images are actually indexed by Google. Apparently Google (as you suggested) is not indexing images that are on pages that are marked "no-index".
Do you think it makes sense for my developers to modify the site map so it no longer submits images that are on pages that are marked as no-index? Is it worth investing resources in fixing this? If this is not going to cause SEO problems I would just as well leave it alone.
Also, the way images are set up, we do not have the ability to customize alt tags. Is this worth fixing? Could repairing these issues with images improve overall ranking?
Thanks, Alan
-
I've not seen instances where Google would index an image that's on a page that's marked noindex.
Be sure that you have consistency between your sitemap and your noindex/index tags on the pages, i.e. don't include a page or image in your sitemap where the page itself (or containing page) indicates noindex.
If you look at how Webmaster Tools OOPS I guess I mean "Search Console" (will Google EVER let a product keep the same name forever???) shows indexation of images in a image sitemap, you'll notice they pair the image indexation count with the web page indexation count. I take that as an indication that they're not interested in indexing images on noindexed pages (which I have to say makes sense to me).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
MOZ is showing that I have non- indexed blog tag posts are they supposed to be nonindexed. My articles are indexed just not the blog tags that take you to other similar articles do I need to fix this or is it ok?
MOZ is showing that my blog post tags are not indexed my question is should they be indexed? my articles are indexed just not the tags that take you to posts that are similar. Do I need to fix this or not? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tyler58910 -
Is the image property really required for Google's breadcrumbs structured data type?
In its structured data (i.e., Schema.org) documentation, Google says that the "image" property is required for the breadcrumbs data type. That seems new to me, and it seems unnecessary for breadcrumbs. Does anyone think this really matters to Google? More info about breadcrumbs data type:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ryan-Ricketts
https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/breadcrumbs I asked Google directly here:
https://twitter.com/RyanRicketts/status/7554782668788531220 -
SEO Indexing issues
Hi, We have been submitting sitemaps on a weekly basis for couple of months now and only 40% of the submitted pages are indexed each time. Whether on the design , content or technical side, the website doesn't violate google guidelines.Can someone help me find the issue? website: http://goo.gl/QN5CevThanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ZeFan0 -
Proper 301 in Place but Old Site Still Indexed In Google
So i have stumbled across an interesting issue with a new SEO client. They just recently launched a new website and implemented a proper 301 redirect strategy at the page level for the new website domain. What is interesting is that the new website is now indexed in Google BUT the old website domain is also still indexed in Google? I even checked the Google Cached date and it shows the new website with a cache date of today. The redirect strategy has been in place for about 30 days. Any thoughts or suggestions on how to get the old domain un-indexed in Google and get all authority passed to the new website?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kchandler0 -
Google Indexed my Site then De-indexed a Week After
Hi there, I'm working on getting a large e-commerce website indexed and I am having a lot of trouble.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
The site is www.consumerbase.com. We have about 130,000 pages and only 25,000 are getting indexed. I use multiple sitemaps so I can tell which product pages are indexed, and we need our "Mailing List" pages the most - http://www.consumerbase.com/mailing-lists/cigar-smoking-enthusiasts-mailing-list.html I submitted a sitemap a few weeks ago of a particular type of product page and about 40k/43k of the pages were indexed - GREAT! A week ago Google de-indexed almost all of those new pages. Check out this image, it kind of boggles my mind and makes me sad. http://screencast.com/t/GivYGYRrOV While these pages were indexed, we immediately received a ton of traffic to them - making me think Google liked them. I think our breadcrumbs, site structure, and "customers who viewed this product also viewed" links would make the site extremely crawl-able. What gives?
Does it come down to our site not having enough Domain Authority?
My client really needs an answer about how we are going to get these pages indexed.0 -
Google Indexing Feedburner Links???
I just noticed that for lots of the articles on my website, there are two results in Google's index. For instance: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html and http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thewebhostinghero+(TheWebHostingHero.com) Now my Feedburner feed is set to "noindex" and it's always been that way. The canonical tag on the webpage is set to: rel='canonical' href='http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html' /> The robots tag is set to: name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" /> I found out that there are scrapper sites that are linking to my content using the Feedburner link. So should the robots tag be set to "noindex" when the requested URL is different from the canonical URL? If so, is there an easy way to do this in Wordpress?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault740 -
New Google Update?
Hey guys, So I have noticed a few of my clients rankings drop suddenly as of last week. They went from page 1 to page 4 and I they have been on page 1 for years, it happened around 17/01/2013. Anyone heard anything about a new update? Sample URL & Keyword: http://www.childrensfunkyfurniture.com/childrens-beds Childrens Beds Your help would be appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversiontactics0 -
Why are so many pages indexed?
We recently launched a new website and it doesn't consist of that many pages. When you do a "site:" search on Google, it shows 1,950 results. Obviously we don't want this to be happening. I have a feeling it's effecting our rankings. Is this just a straight up robots.txt problem? We addressed that a while ago and the number of results aren't going down. It's very possible that we still have it implemented incorrectly. What are we doing wrong and how do we start getting pages "un-indexed"?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MichaelWeisbaum0