Author Topic: Competing Against Yourself? (Read 5930 times)

PaulieWalnuts · « **on:** February 14, 2013, 19:38 »

I'm working on building traffic for my personal site and noticed Google Images seems to do a pretty good job of weeding out duplicates. So if I have images scattered at Zazzle, Red Bubble or wherever, it's probably shifting traffic away from my personal site. And I'm competing against myself.

At most of these places I make a small percentage of next to nothing an make an occasional sale. I'm considering dropping them to see what happens to my personal site traffic where I can the majority of the profits.

Anybody else noticed this Google Images de-dup thing?

cthoman · « **Reply #1 on:** February 15, 2013, 10:29 »

I definitely think it is something to consider. I'm a firm believer in stacking the deck, so images get seen where you want them to. If they don't exist somewhere else, they can't be found there. I suppose you could also try delayed uploading or adjusting your titles or SEO to make your own site more appealing too.

Pinocchio · « **Reply #2 on:** February 15, 2013, 13:13 »

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on February 14, 2013, 19:38

I'm working on building traffic for my personal site and noticed Google Images seems to do a pretty good job of weeding out duplicates. So if I have images scattered at Zazzle, Red Bubble or wherever, it's probably shifting traffic away from my personal site. And I'm competing against myself.

At most of these places I make a small percentage of next to nothing an make an occasional sale. I'm considering dropping them to see what happens to my personal site traffic where I can the majority of the profits.

Anybody else noticed this Google Images de-dup thing?

Hi, I don't understand what you mean by "Google....weeding out duplicates". How is this reflected in the Google search results? Also, are there features at Zazzle etc that you don't have on (or can't access from) your personal web site, or is there another reason you place images at these sites?

Regards

jareso · « **Reply #3 on:** February 15, 2013, 15:47 »

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on February 14, 2013, 19:38

... Google Images seems to do a pretty good job of weeding out duplicates.

I suggest you to have your preview images that are available on your personal portfolio website in little bit higher resolution than they are available anywhere else. Search engines prefer higher resolution images vs. lower resolution images.

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #4 on:** February 15, 2013, 18:38 »

Quote from: Pinocchio on February 15, 2013, 13:13

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on February 14, 2013, 19:38
I'm working on building traffic for my personal site and noticed Google Images seems to do a pretty good job of weeding out duplicates. So if I have images scattered at Zazzle, Red Bubble or wherever, it's probably shifting traffic away from my personal site. And I'm competing against myself.

At most of these places I make a small percentage of next to nothing an make an occasional sale. I'm considering dropping them to see what happens to my personal site traffic where I can the majority of the profits.

Anybody else noticed this Google Images de-dup thing?

Hi, I don't understand what you mean by "Google....weeding out duplicates". How is this reflected in the Google search results? Also, are there features at Zazzle etc that you don't have on (or can't access from) your personal web site, or is there another reason you place images at these sites?

Regards

Let's say you sell all of your images at 20 different stock websites, print on demand websites, art websites, and then your own website.

Google Images indexes all of these sites so technically if you have one image at 20 different websites it should show up in Google Images 20 times. This isn't what I've found. GI seems to pick one image from different sites so there are no/few duplicates in it's search results.

This means if you are trying to sell images from your own site that these other sites are actually competing for search result space against your personal website. And I would guess that you get less personal website traffic as a result. So you're competing against yourself by having images all over the place.

And these other sites make so little for me that I'm wondering if I should dump them to get that traffic to come to my site.

Make more sense?

PaulieWalnuts · « **Reply #5 on:** February 15, 2013, 18:39 »

Quote from: jareso on February 15, 2013, 15:47

Quote from: PaulieWalnuts on February 14, 2013, 19:38
... Google Images seems to do a pretty good job of weeding out duplicates.
I suggest you to have your preview images that are available on your personal portfolio website in little bit higher resolution than they are available anywhere else. Search engines prefer higher resolution images vs. lower resolution images.

Good point, thanks.

Jo Ann Snover · « **Reply #6 on:** February 15, 2013, 23:25 »

In addition to making your actual images larger on your own site, you should perhaps look at what 123RF appears to be doing. Their watermarked thumbs show up in Google searches as 1200 x 1200 pixel images. They aren't that size though. So lying about your thumb size somewhere in the HTML looks (for the moment anyway) to be an SEO strategy of sorts

Pinocchio · « **Reply #7 on:** February 16, 2013, 18:31 »

@PaulieWalnuts:

Thanks for the explanation, I get it now. I agree this is an issue. And, without intending to go off topic, I think it's going to become a bigger issue when apps like PicScout really get going; those apps need to figure out which of the instances of an image are hosted at a point that can license the image. When PicScout was fingerprinting content at PhotoShelter, it processed only those images that were priced AND in public galleries. So, if your images are priced at all these web sites, you may find PicScout/Image Exchange offering buyers licenses from sites that are sub-optimal from your point of view. PhotoShelter is apparently trying to get the PicScout fingerprinting started up again; that may create an opportunity to test my hypothesis.

I have very mixed feelings about PicScout; PhotoShelter explicitly indicated that when PicScout/Image Exchange brings you a buyer, they expect to "share" in the revenue, but I never discovered what "share" means....

Regards

qwerty · « **Reply #8 on:** February 16, 2013, 22:57 »

Quote from: jsnover on February 15, 2013, 23:25

In addition to making your actual images larger on your own site, you should perhaps look at what 123RF appears to be doing. Their watermarked thumbs show up in Google searches as 1200 x 1200 pixel images. They aren't that size though. So lying about your thumb size somewhere in the HTML looks (for the moment anyway) to be an SEO strategy of sorts

I definitely see more of my images in google search from 123rf than from any other source. So what ever they're doing works. maybe 1205 x 1205

djpadavona · « **Reply #9 on:** February 18, 2013, 17:54 »

Quote from: qwerty on February 16, 2013, 22:57

Quote from: jsnover on February 15, 2013, 23:25
In addition to making your actual images larger on your own site, you should perhaps look at what 123RF appears to be doing. Their watermarked thumbs show up in Google searches as 1200 x 1200 pixel images. They aren't that size though. So lying about your thumb size somewhere in the HTML looks (for the moment anyway) to be an SEO strategy of sorts

I definitely see more of my images in google search from 123rf than from any other source. So what ever they're doing works. maybe 1205 x 1205

Two Things.

1. It's Not Working. You might see a lot of their images in Google, but how are their sales? Mid Tier at best, so it isn't translating to success.

2. When Google figures out (and they will) that a website is scamming their system by putting in fake dimensions, they will punish the website by decreasing their ranking or removing them from search altogether.

Don't follow this example unless you want to play with fire.

jareso · « **Reply #10 on:** February 19, 2013, 03:16 »

Quote from: djpadavona on February 18, 2013, 17:54

2. When Google figures out (and they will) that a website is scamming their system by putting in fake dimensions, they will punish the website by decreasing their ranking or removing them from search altogether.

Don't follow this example unless you want to play with fire.

Of course real higher resolution images needs to be used! No fake dimensions! If real resolutions and real dimensions of images are present on portfolio website there is no reason to get punished by search engine.

If rulles are followed, for what could get those websites punished?
For having real high resolution images avaleable on pages? No ...

Quote from: djpadavona on February 18, 2013, 17:54

1. It's Not Working. You might see a lot of their images in Google, but how are their sales? Mid Tier at best, so it isn't translating to success.

Rankings and image sales depend on various factors and business strategies.

But traffic is one of very important factors. Because any traffic counts! Get more and more traffic to your websites and soon or later, this time-frame depends on traffic quality, your images, etc., you will bump into some buyer(s)! This concept is really easy as that! You will maybe not get tons of buyers, so you will probably not became top tier as big as those 4

, but anyway you will have more buyers than before! <- Every singe new buyer who finds your images located on your websites counts, doesn’t he/she?
For me definetely counts!

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Author Topic: Competing Against Yourself? (Read 5930 times)

PaulieWalnuts

cthoman

Pinocchio

jareso

PaulieWalnuts

PaulieWalnuts

Jo Ann Snover

Pinocchio

qwerty

djpadavona

jareso

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