Smugmug and Search engine optimization (SEO) - I give up

Google do have a lot of help pages for webmasters. Here is the one for images: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=114016

Give your images detailed, informative filenames

The filename can give Google clues about the subject matter of the image. Try to make your filename a good description of the subject matter of the image. For example, my-new-black-kitten.jpg is a lot more informative than IMG00023.JPG. Descriptive filenames can also be useful to users: If we're unable to find suitable text in the page on which we found the image, we'll use the filename as the image's snippet in our search results.

Before Smugmug made the changes with filenames the filenames looked like this: 24815903-1qRs4-L-1.jpg.

After the "We have made it so filenames get seen and indexed by Google" the filenames looks like this: 24815903-1qRs4-L-1.jpg.

No change at all to filenames.

Photo hosting sites - Search visits - SEO compared

If you are looking for a search engine friendly photo hosting site yiu might have a look at the statistics from alexa.com. Alexa computes traffic statistics from a lot of sources and are regarded as a great source for information by many webmasters. See more at About the Alexa Traffic Rankings.

You do have to be careful when evaluating statistics. Here is an example: (both sites claim to be SEO friendly)
Seach visits (percent) -  Zenfolio vs. Smugmug

Parameter handling in Google webmaster tools - Suggestions to my Smugmug site

Parameter handling now in Google webmaster tools

It can be found under "Site configuration" - "Settings"

This new Parameter handling filter shows the importance Google places on duplicate content and the problems many websites face with regards to displaying the duplicate content accessible via different URLs.

Parameter suggestions on my Smugmug site.

Smugmug is my photo hosting site and it looks like Smugmug has a big problem with duplicate content.
This is what Google webmaster tools is saying about my Smugmug site:

Arnakke Photo galleries on Smugmug

Smugmug has changed the URL structure and introduced plain-english URL's (They call it NiceNames). Here is the new plain-english links to most galleries on Photo Arnakke.
The links are changed in my horizontal navigation bar which is based on the idea found on Free CSS Drop-Down Menu Framework. I can highly recommend this solution for a horizontal drop-down menu in Smugmug.

Plain-English URL’s now in Smugmug – a SEO improvement?

The first part of a major SEO (Search Engine Optimization) improvement was released the other day.

Gallery URL-paths are now in plain English. Instead of “/Gallery/1234567-xxxx” you can now control the URL path so it looks like this: “/sports/fishing/Alaska/1234567-xxxx”.

Good news - Smugmug SEO improvements releasing soon

Search engine optimization (SEO) improvements soon to be implemented in Smugmug.

In Smugmug’s feature request forum some of the feature requests regarding SEO have changed status to “Started” and a few posts by Smugmug representatives on the Dgrin support forum have mentioned that some of the improvements are ready to be released and other improvements will be released not long after.

So, what changes can we expect? There is not lot information about this, but there are a few posts on Dgrin that may give an idea about what SEO changes we can expect:

Page titles - Smugmug versus Google SEO-recommendations

Frustrated of the - in my opinion - very poor SEO (Search Engine Optimization) performance in Smugmug, I have posted this on Dgrin - Support forum for Smugmug:

King penguins at South Georgia Island gallery on Smugmug

I did have some success in getting a HTML page and images indexed by Google with my gallery Adelie, Gentoo and Macaroni penguins in Antarctica.

I have tried the same with another gallery South Georgia Island and King Penguins but so far without any success. The last cache of the page is more than a month old.
Some of my most popular King penguin photos are shown on this page, so I am a bit disappointed right now. I have deleted the photo in the gallery and now it is all HTML. As this page is on my Smugmug site it means that I cannot any longer add comments. It is not shown in feeds anymore. I have also made the gallery invisible to Smugmug searches.
Hopefully this will help. The weeks to come will tell.

Update 2009-08-04:
Google has indexed this page on a number of different URL's (some of them not even belong to me, but to other Smugmug users), so I have deleted the gallery and started all over again. This time I have disabled the "Hello smuggers" before Google had the chance to index this gallery under other user accounts.
I hope that Smugmug will solve these serious SEO bugs soon - especially the duplicate page titles, the duplicate URL's and the duplicate Meta description issues.

Update 2010-10-12:
Smugmug have not solved these serious Search engine issues, and I do not think that they ever will.

SEO friendly Image hosting site wanted

As an unknown photographer I am looking for an image hosting site which is up-to-date with the latest SEO-guidelines from Google and other search engines. It should also support geotagging of photos witch I believe will become very popular in the next few years.

I have looked at more than 20 reviews of photo / image hosting sites and none of them takes SEO (Search engine optimization) into consideration. It should be an important part of a review.

I have also checked more than 20 sites myself and most of them – if not all - fail to comply to even simple SEO guidelines such as Page title, Meta description, Header tags and Duplicate pages.

As a result only a tiny fraction of the images on those sites can be found on Google and other image search engines.

I still hope to find a SEO friendly image hosting site with geotagging facilities, but my hope fades.


Update: 2009-06-08

Just found Comparison of Image Sharing Sites for Potential SEO Benefit.
However, it is a bit outdated and not very trustworthy as Smugmug – which I know very well – are given way to many Green V’s (Should have Red X in “Unique page titles”, “Optimized URL’s”, “Add external link to photo page” (brake if you move photo to another gallery), “Allow user comments on photo pages” (implemented with Java and not visible to robots), “Img alt text” (only partly).

Missing in this comparison are important issues like “Meta description” , “duplicate pages” and success rate of indexed images in popular image search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Smugmug and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

My Smugmug hosted photos are next to impossible to be found on Google and other Search engines.

I just read "Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide" found on Google's SEO Starter Guide page

I am really surprised to see all the hints they are NOT following and how many of the 'avoid's that they ARE doing on Smugmug.

To me this fully explains why Smugmug is doing so badly in Search Engines.

Smugmug have just introduced Smugmug's Feature feedback forum and one of the topics is "Improve our search engine results (better SEO)"

I gave it 3 votes and added the following comment:

It would be a good idea to follow all the tips and avoids described in the document "Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide" found on Google's SEO Starter Guide page

This includes - but not limited to:

Page titles,
Meta data,
URL-structure,
One URL per image
Navigation (HTML + XML Sitemap)
Anchor text
Use of heading tags
Image file names
Quality content
Duplicate versions of the same page.

Add to this a per image preferred size to be indexed. (Size do matter - Google has Small, medium, large and XL)

I was under the expression that they had already started improving this (postet on Dgrin), but this SEO issue is only "Planned". Hopefully they will start soon.

Update July 5, 2009

The Smugmug feature request Improve our search engine results (better SEO) is no longer planned. The status has changed to 'null' - 'nothing'. I hope this is not true.

If you are a Smugmug user - frustrated of not being found by Google and other Search Engines - Go and vote for this SEO-issue request - and do post your frustration on Smugmug Dgrin Forum.

I'm still hoping that Smugmug will take these SEO-issues serious one day, but by hope fades.

Does anyone knows about a SEO-friendly image hosting site?

Update August 25, 2009

Smugmug released a SEO-update and plan to release more later. Please check out my latest post about Smugmug and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Google Image Search comparison for Smugmug, Pbase and Panoramio

I published this comparison on smugmug's DGrin forum on march 17, 2009 and still no reaction of any kind from Smugmug.

Inspired by this thread and a video from Google's Peter Linsley about "Get up-to-date on Image Search":
Video (15 min): http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...ge-search.html

I asked myself:
How good is SM doing on Google Image Search (GIS)? And how good is the visitor experience with people coming from GIS?

I tried many different keywords (with between 500 and 999 hits in SM excellent search engine) and the word "caracara" turned up to be give about average result for SM. Thumbnails from SM are very unreliable in Google Image search. Most of them do not lead you to a caracara in SM (Google Earth files, Thumbnail from today’s popular etc). Thumbnails will not likely turn up in a any Google Image Search and that is good, especially for a visitor and also for SM, so I counted only images before the first Thumbnail.

I Have chosen to compare with Pbase because they also have an inside search engine which I could use, and Panoramio because it is owned by Google, so this gives an estimate of the practical percentage of images you can expect to see in GIS. (Just like Flickr images in Yahoo image search),

Images in SM: 783 and 100% accurate.
Images in GIS: 15 and 66% accurate. Typical res 400x268. 5 linking to a www-URL, 5 linking to a Nickname-URL and 5 photos not linking to a caracara in SM.
Note: SM removes the frame when clicking an image from GIS, which makes it impossible to hit the "Back" for continuing the image search. This is really annoying.
Verdict for SM: 1.91% of images in GIS with poor resolution - and a bad user experience.

to comparison: result for Pbase:
Images in Pbase: 1408 - 100% accurate
Images in GIS: 223 - 100% accurate. Typical res 800x500
Verdict for Pbase: 15.83% of images in GIS with medium resolution - and a very good user experience.

to comparison with my images in panoramio which are not in my SM galleries:
Images in panoramio : 44
Images in GIS: 23 - 100% accurate. typical res 1100x800
Verdict for Panoramio(alone): 52.27% of images in GIS with original resolution - and a very good user experience.
(Theese photos do not exists anywhere else on the internet)

to comparison with my images in panoramio which are also in my SM galleries:
Images in panoramio : 36
Images in GIS: 7 - 100% accurate. typical res 1100x800
Verdict for Panoramio(+SM): 19.44% of images in GIS -with original resolution and a very good user experience.
(I cannot give an explanation to this - GIS might find similar images in SM and regard them as dublicates or ????)
(I have moved half of these images to a gallery not seen by SM or Google to see if this will make a difference. The weeks to come will tell)

Smugmug URL's - Blog from Garret Wilson

Found this blog:
Garret Wilson Blog 2008-04-21 Ridiculous SmugMug URLs which describes very accurately the URL structure in Smugmug.
I would not call it Ridiculous, but it does make it really difficult to get famous when you have chosen Smugmug as your photo host site.

Smugmug ignores the Image search problem.

I thought that Smugmug was up to date with the principles of effective image search by popular image searching from Google, Yahoo, MSN and others They are not. They live in a world that stopped for at least 5 years ago.
Google Image Search indexes for example only ca. 1% of their images, and half of them refer to another picture on Smugmug than the image you see at Google's image search.
As a reference 50% of my pictures posted on Panoramio are indexed.

If Smugmug cannot find a solution to this little problem, then what is the advantage of a big site like Smugmug, if your images are not visible in search engines?

Ida think that I should make my own photo agency on the net with all the necessary functions, and it may also be the end result.

Smugmug is a great and old-fashioned company who have lost all sense of reality and they have indeed gone down in Google's rating of 8 to 7 not long ago and will probably go down further if they do not improve very soon.

So, SMUGMUG, do something very soon.

Their forum DGRIN are as always helpful with all kind of primitive workarounds, but when it comes to really serious questions, they simply do not even bother to react. It is really BIG company against "little stupid customer".
This is really not what I expected of a "respectable" company like Smugmug.
This Image Search (and normal text search) issue have been a problem for a lot of their customer for at least 2 years. They have done absolutely NOTHING so far.

So, once more, SMUGMUG, do something very soon.