This is the last thing I have time for today, but many of you want more information about how and why your eHow image version that link to articles that are NOT yours are ranking higher in Google image search than the version that you originally uploaded into your article.
It doesn’t seem quite right.
There’s been speculation that size matters, hence the supposed reason that an original or upsized version ranks first, and it just happens to be linked to someone else’s article–often belonging to Demand Media–instead of your own, with its thumbnail image version.
There’s been speculation that Google controls the outcome of the search, and that’s not accurate. Google follows the lead of the publisher. That’s a big part of what makes Google search relevant; if a publisher says,
“Hey, lookie here, search engine. See that H1 tag? That’s important stuff, and those bold words are something I want my readers to notice, so pay attention.”
Google notices and responds accordingly. And Google gives your pages and images the same importance that you give them. Do you link to one page from several places on your site? Google will notice, and that page will rank higher than others in your site that have fewer internal (and/or external) links.
It works the same way for images.
So I was curious. What would happen if I searched for one of my own original images that I had uploaded to an InfoBarrel article a couple of months ago?
The results were so natural, and so—what you would normally expect them to be—that I will let them speak for themselves. Below is a screenshot of my Google image search for: make a scrapbook in Photoshop. You can repeat these results for yourself.
All of the images with red arrows pointing to them are mine. Notice that the LARGER image version, which links to a set of articles that are related by keyword, (mine and other authors) is SECOND, which shoots that theory down.
This screenshot shows that my image ranks first in Google for the original InfoBarrel article in which I posted it.
And Bohica the elephant will be back soon (I hope) to help prove my theories as well, just as soon as Google finds him. It seems the Google image bot doesn’t visit the Pink Elephant jungle nearly as often as it does Text City.
Does it EVER end, with eHow, Kim? Geeze….
Apparently not, Howie. Sure wish it would, though. I think it will end when Demand Media sells eHow–at least for those of us who think their shady tactics should be exposed. Then if whoever buys eHow realizes afterward that they bought an artificially-inflated property riddled with technical and ethical issues, who knows? We’re likely to hear about it yet again. But at least whoever buys eHow will likely have the money to do something about it.
Thank you for this information. I am going to check out the same type of scenario using my non-eHow websites/blogs. I’m sure the results will be the same. If larger pics always ranked higher on Google, then all the noobs who submit 15inchx15inch pics would always rank first, no?
Did eHow used to automatically resize our pics when we submitted them (before they mass resized them to 200×200)? Because I’m pretty sure all my pics were uploaded at various sizes, yet in the larger pics they seem to have a consistent size- that I don’t recall uploading. I’ll have to check my originals to check that out.
Thanks for staying on this issue. Can’t wait for Pink Elephant info.
You’re correct, Glorybug, if larger pics always ranked first it wouldn’t make much sense. And yes, eHow’s system automatically resizes images to 200X200 px thumbnails for the top of each article. That is standard practice. What is NOT standard practice is hiding attribution text and promoting prepaid content above writer-owned content, and worse yet, using the writers’ own images to do it!
You were the one who initially spearheaded investigating the eHow images issue, so thank you.
And is vegan-o-rama your new site?