testing please

[fleetwood]

Disallow: /*.gif$
Disallow: /*.jpg$

Jo
I was intrigued about this last time you mentioned this too

I understand the thinking behind it, but is there no downside to this in terms of SEO? (forgive my ignorance if its on show)

I follow the advice I've read by naming images in line with titles etc.
If I instruct the bots not to index my images, does this not affect my rankings in any way?

Let me try to explain what I mean.

I'm selling captaincomics #1
I give the product a title of captain-comics01
I name the image captain-comics01.jpg
I score brownie points with google for having my title and image names matching.
Do I then lose any brownie points by saying "hey, don't index my images"?

Furthering this (or digging myself a bigger hole):

Won't a search for captaincomics more likely bring up a page that includes an indexed product AND image with the same name, over one that contains both product and image with that name, but with the image not indexed?

If this all sounds stupid, please forgive me - I try to get all the SEO stuff, but its guesswork at best

btw Nick - welcome to the non-techie club (I'm an honary member )
- if I name my product cptcmc.jpg, that kind of defeats the optimisation object of naming the image like the product thats going to be searched for.

Martin

[RuralWeb]

Won't a search for captaincomics more likely bring up a page that includes an indexed product AND image with the same name

Yes it will - google looks at page Title, H tags, alt tags, body text/keyword density, file name and image name if they all match then up you go. If you miss one out then you start to loose the edge. Google also does not like any attempts to block googlebot - I dont know what effect blocking the images will have, it will be interesting to see!!

You need to decide if image theft takes priority over SE rankings.

[pinbrook]

i've had the disallow in jpg and gifs in place for a good long time on surf-wax with no noticable depreciation in SEO

eg for a few generic phrases

surfing dvd pos 6 of 935,000
windsurfing dvd pos 1 of 200,000
footbag pos1 of 14000

I wasn't happy to see my photography on google images which i why I implemented it, but of course by diallowing all images it does affect shop images too. What is the function of Google images anyway, I've always regarded it as a free for all to steal other peoples images which is why I refuse to join.

I'm not sure of the whole truth in the belief that google doesn't like its spider being restricted - and I'd like to be corrected with hard evidence - but what is the point in allowing Google free access to index all of your site when a part of it is not relevant to visitors. eg folders contains cgi scripts, folders containing vistors stats, .cat files,and so on. Google isn't going to index a fil file so why not tell it to ignore them.

A well crafted robots file is only doing its job of telling the spider what the vistors will want to see, and telling it where not to waste its time

I still feel SEO comes down to body text at the end of the day, page names, image names etc are all icing on the cake, but if you still need text on the page, preferably backed up with pages of sticky content to draw more visitors.

Why do you think Amazon, ebuyer and co have product reviews? Extra sticky content written by others (so they don't have to pay their own staff) full of keywords relevant to the page, which changes every day.

[RuralWeb]

Checkout how google suggests you block images:

http://www.google.com/support/webmas...y?answer=35308

To remove all the images on your site from our index, place the following robots.txt file in your server root:

User-agent: Googlebot-Image<
Disallow: /

[pinbrook]

So if Google tells us how to block its image spider can we assume the previous statement about Google not liking being blocked is withdrawn?

Don't forget, my code restricts all spiders not just Google.

[Mike Hughes]

I wouldn't worry about blocking images to search engines. All you're doing is stopping them from downloading the image. They'll still see the image filename so there shouldn't be a detrimental effect on SEO.

There were some threads in other forums in the past where people were upset that google was showing links to pages that they weren't supposed to visit. Google's response was that the they could still see all the links and anchor text for those pages and so they were indexed even though Google hadn't visited them.

Mike

[RuralWeb]

I know its not scientific but if you take the DVD KLABAUTER then the No1 on Google is:

http://www.surfstore.co.uk/acatalog/...g_DVDS_13.html

Where the image is named.

Surf-Wax is No2 and 3 even though there is a single page for the product but the image is not named (I know there are lots of other factors involved)

Now dont all go crazy - all I am saying is that in SEO it is best to have the images named. However you must consider ALL factors that affect your business and if image theft is a problem then you must control it and by not having the images named the effect on your rankings will be minor - see the example above.

Google does not publish its algorithum details so SEO is down to opinion and everyone has different ideas - thats what makes the forum work.

[pinbrook]

all I am saying is that in SEO it is best to have the images named

We are in agreement here, it does no harm to name your images, but it is merely a small contributary factor.

There are other factors that should be addressed first

1 body text
2 page title
3 linking strategy
4 H tags

if you get the keyword density correct on the top 4, the other methods of increasing keyword density become less of a vital factor. (They should not be disregarded, but I would propose items 1-4 get addressed first)

5 pagenames
6 alt tags
7 image names

In the example you cited from Surf-wax I would put money on the reason it is pos 2 and 3 and not 1 lies more with the lack of body text than the image name.

[RuralWeb]

lies more with the lack of body text than the image name.

Most certainly - if there was good body text on the single product page then it would almost certainly be No1 - as jo says body text is more important than image name.

[pinbrook]

As a follow up to the original post about using mod rewrite to prevent hotlinking, it is not a good idea to use the mod rewrite code. (as posted in post1)

I have removed it for 2 reasons

it is not compatible with all browsers, and some people see the replacement image rather than the real image when viewing the site that holds the code to prevent hotlinking

It has been known to upset spiders.

[george]

Good thread this.

Actinic Gold section activated yet?