I've been looking at Google from time to time to see how they are indexing my site. This morning I searched for "lonesome bengal cat christmas tree" in Google (not Google images) and my Symbio website image came up as the first result. I logged out of Google and the same happened, but I'm always uncertain how much Google modifies the results based on the person searching.

Could I ask someone to search for that phrase and see if I have really moved to position one? If so, we are doing really well as a group!

Google Images doesn't see this image at all though - is that because Google Images is looking for something very different - ie keywords attached to the actual JPEG - or is it that there is a different cycle for updating that index and we will get there eventually?

What is also interesting about this result is that the word "lonesome" isn't one of my keywords - it is in the title and description, and so our worries about the site search mechanism are just internal worries - Google will search all fields and find our image (probably searching plurals as well). So a buyer will get to our sites to a particular image page. Our main task then is to help the buyer find the best version of the image they are seeking. I think this means we need to work on displaying similars, or sets of similar images, rather than assume our buyer starts from the home page of our site and starts searching for a particular keyword. Hope that makes sense!

Steve

I just tried it, and you came up #1 in the search results for me as well.

Coming up in the first position here in Germany.

Wow - that is great - and great job, Leo for building in the right SEO from the start. Perhaps it will start to appear in the Images searches soon!

Steve

Yep number one here too. Sweet!

number 1, congrats:)

Same here, came up first. Nice image!

Nice one!

My "dog, paw, beach, raised" came up first the other day (and still does) but now "dog,paw,beach" which is slightly more generic comes up about 6th - above any other versions of it

You can always keep a clean browser to double check searches.

I just did a search for "snow monkey stock image"  and was excited that 3 of the top 4 images were mine.... until I looked closer and saw that they are hosted on 123, and Shutter Stock....

It will take a little bit. Generally you'd be aiming for likely-to-be-searched phrases or 1-3 word combinations. It'll take a few months to get your foot in the door on some searches. If your looking to increase your searchability on a certain phrase putting it in bold in the description will help.

Quote from: steheap on April 11, 2013, 16:42
Wow - that is great - and great job, Leo for building in the right SEO from the start. Perhaps it will start to appear in the Images searches soon!

Steve

May I note that I think your watermark is very faint?

I could barely see it. Well, just too faint for my taste.

QuoteMay I note that I think your watermark is very faint

It is always a balance between being obnoxious and putting off the buyers and avoiding free use of the image. Many of my best sellers are already visible without watermarks at similar sizes, because they are on various blogs and websites and I take a relatively calm view towards this. Someone could right click on my own stock site and use it with the watermark - but that person is not going to be a buyer either, so no money lost. So, I've erred on the side of showing the best view of my images that I can, and if they are stolen, then they are stolen...

Steve

Quote from: steheap on April 11, 2013, 19:07

QuoteMay I note that I think your watermark is very faint

It is always a balance between being obnoxious and putting off the buyers and avoiding free use of the image. Many of my best sellers are already visible without watermarks at similar sizes, because they are on various blogs and websites and I take a relatively calm view towards this. Someone could right click on my own stock site and use it with the watermark - but that person is not going to be a buyer either, so no money lost. So, I've erred on the side of showing the best view of my images that I can, and if they are stolen, then they are stolen...

Steve

I totally understand. Just wanted to make sure

Quote from: click_click on April 11, 2013, 19:02

Quote from: steheap on April 11, 2013, 16:42
Wow - that is great - and great job, Leo for building in the right SEO from the start. Perhaps it will start to appear in the Images searches soon!

Steve

May I note that I think your watermark is very faint?

I could barely see it. Well, just too faint for my taste.

The problem is there is not control over the watermark. On some of my images, I can hardly see it. On one of my best sellers it is totally obnoxious and I hate it. But if I adjust for the one image (dark colors), for sure it will disappear on the lighter images. I think Leo has it on his list, until then I can't keep puttering around with it because it's futile.

Very strange result this morning on Google search. I searched for "macro close cherry blossom dc festival" and half way down page 1 are two entries from my site, BackyardStockPhotos. The second one is a normal result of an image. The first one leads to an xml page that describes the results of a search in text form. I don't think it is the page source - it looks like a site map.

Two questions - do other people see this? And then - any idea what is being searched? I do use Yoast Wordpress and I know it creates an xml site map. Should I be disabling that from being searched - I would have thought not, but displaying this as a search result on Google is not a great way to get traffic to our sites.

Any advice very welcome!!

Steve

PS - the URL of the problem search is http://www.backyardstockphotos.com/search-images/spring/page/2/?symbiostock_network_search=1&symbiostock_network_info=1

I get the same with one of mine that I searched for (and I tested it on an early image that I uploaded before I started using the Yoast SEO)   Perhaps this should go in the bug hunting section ?

Check the slug - mine had 400-2 in it instead of the title, wonder if this is anything to do with it ?

go to
https://www.google.com/webmasters
and register the location of you site maps.

I don't know if that will fix your problem, but it can't hurt.
to find your site maps they are listed in the Yost SEO section.

OK - I have added my sitemap (and tested it OK) to Google. I'll wait and see what happens next!

Perhaps if Leo looks at this set of posts he will comment as it is impacting more than one of us

Steve

When other site, linked to yours, displays network search results, it has buttons and links leading to your site. When links contain symbiostock_network_info=1, your page returns xml file. Google follows this link, gets that file and index it.
I think that the links should have "nofollow" attribute, and maybe entire site should have something in robots.txt file, to deny xml indexing.

I think I see. So this result is coming because other sites link to mine, Google finds that search link and find the site xml? So it is something we really need Leo to look at, rather than just something I can configure on my end?

Steve

Yes, (I 've edited my previous post above).
And those xml files are something that is not stored in your site, but generated and sent to  network site, as answer to network search.

I do not see the link but that little smiley face that Leo has created for a bug or something wrong

Quote from: ajt on April 15, 2013, 17:39
When other site, linked to yours, displays network search results, it has buttons and links leading to your site. When links contain symbiostock_network_info=1, your page returns xml file. Google follows this link, gets that file and index it.
I think that the links should have "nofollow" attribute, and maybe entire site should have something in robots.txt file, to deny xml indexing.

Tanks for finding that. Actually it is not supposed to be there, but instead be appended by javascript just as you click - allowing google to index. I'll take care of that.
BUG!!!