The images on site are not found/indexed, it's been recommended we change their presentation to Google Bot - could this create a cloaking issue?
-
Hi
We have an issue with images on our site not being found or indexed by Google. We have an image sitemap but the images are served on the Sitecore powered site within <divs>which Google can't read. The developers have suggested the below solution:</divs>
Googlebot class="header-banner__image" _src="/~/media/images/accommodation/arctic-canada/arctic-safari-camp/arctic-cafari-camp-david-briggs.ashx"/>_Non Googlebot <noscript class="noscript-image"><br /></span></em><em><span><div role="img"<br /></span></em><em><span>aria-label="Arctic Safari Camp, Arctic Canada"<br /></span></em><em><span>title="Arctic Safari Camp, Arctic Canada"<br /></span></em><em><span>class="header-banner__image"<br /></span></em><em><span>style="background-image: url('/~/media/images/accommodation/arctic-canada/arctic-safari-camp/arctic-cafari-camp-david-briggs.ashx?mw=1024&hash=D65B0DE9B311166B0FB767201DAADA9A4ADA4AC4');"></div><br /></span></em><em><span></noscript>
aria-label="Arctic Safari Camp, Arctic Canada" title="Arctic Safari Camp, Arctic Canada" class="header-banner__image image" data-src="/~/media/images/accommodation/arctic-canada/arctic-safari-camp/arctic-cafari-camp-david-briggs.ashx" data-max-width="1919" data-viewport="0.80" data-aspect="1.78" data-aspect-target="1.00" >
Is this something that could be flagged as potential cloaking though, as we are effectively then showing code looking just for the user agent Googlebot?The devs have said that via their contacts Google has advised them that the original way we set up the site is the most efficient and considered way for the end user. However they have acknowledged the Googlebot software is not sophisticated enough to recognise this. Is the above solution the most suitable?Many thanksKate
-
Hi Dan
I had missed that reply; cheers for the heads up (my email notification never came through). I'll talk to the devs about implementing to target all bots.
Thanks!
-
Hi Kate
Wanted to be sure you saw Barry's reply over on the Google forum. He also seems to think this would be fine, but I do agree with his recommendation to target all bots, not just Googlebot.
I also was able to find your page in Google and checked the cached version. Google's cache looks the same as the live version, so I think you should be fine.
-
Many thanks for taking the time to respond and sorry for my slow response.
At present we feel that it could be seen as cloaking as we would be introducing specific code just for Google. This would change the render view in Search Console as well between Google / users.
Thanks
Kate
-
Hi Kate
I don't think it would be looked at as cloaking. One thing I would definitely do though to check is a fetch and render in search console. In the render, the Googlebot view should be the same as the browser view. You can also check the cached version of the page as well.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Site still indexed after request 'change of address' search console
Hello, A couple of weeks ago we requested a change of address in Search console. The new, correct url is already indexed. Yet when we search the old url (with site:www.) we find that the old url is still indexed. Is there another way to remove old urls?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conversal0 -
Is it necessary to use Google's Structured Data Markup or alternative for my B2B site?
Hi, We are in the process of going through a re-design for our site. Am trying to understand if we need to use some sort of structured data either from Google Structured data or schema. org?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Krausch0 -
Why isn't my site being indexed by Google?
Our domain was originally pointing to a Squarespace site that went live in March. In June, the site was rebuilt in WordPress and is currently hosted with WPEngine. Oddly, the site is being indexed by Bing and Yahoo, but is not indexed at all in Google i.e. site:example.com yields nothing. As far as I know, the site has never been indexed by Google, neither before nor after the switch. What gives? A few things to note: I am not "discouraging search engines" in WordPress Robots.txt is fine - I'm not blocking anything that shouldn't be blocked A sitemap has been submitted via Google Webmaster Tools and I have "fetched as Google" and submitted for indexing - No errors I've entered both the www and non-www in WMT and chose a preferred There are several incoming links to the site, some from popular domains The content on the site is pretty standard and crawlable, including several blog posts I have linked up the account to a Google+ page
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jtollaMOT0 -
What recommendations do you have for the SEO of this site?
Hello, Could you glance at this site and let me know if you see anything we could improve upon? www.nlpca.com A couple of notes: We're over-optimized for the term "NLP" on the home page. We're removing the footer links soon. We have 2 locations: San Francisco, CA and Salt Lake City, UT. Our main keyword is "NLP Training" but we would like to rank higher for the keyword "NLP". Also note that we're completely white hat, but we have international site-wide backlinks, and a couple of site-wide backlinks in site's footers - all friends and colleagues of ours.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Remove URLs that 301 Redirect from Google's Index
I'm working with a client who has 301 redirected thousands of URLs from their primary subdomain to a new subdomain (these are unimportant pages with regards to link equity). These URLs are still appearing in Google's results under the primary domain, rather than the new subdomain. This is problematic because it's creating an artificial index bloat issue. These URLs make up over 90% of the URLs indexed. My experience has been that URLs that have been 301 redirected are removed from the index over time and replaced by the new destination URL. But it has been several months, close to a year even, and they're still in the index. Any recommendations on how to speed up the process of removing the 301 redirected URLs from Google's index? Will Google, or any search engine for that matter, process a noindex meta tag if the URL's been redirected?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | trung.ngo0 -
Google's Exact Match Algorithm Reduced Our Traffic!
Google's first Panda de-valued our Web store, www.audiobooksonline.com, and our traffic went from 2500 - 3000 (mostly organic referrals) per month to 800 - 1000. Google's under-valuing of our Web store continued to reduce our traffic to 400-500 for the past few months. From 4/5/2013 to 4/6/2013 our traffic dropped 50% more, because (I believe) of Google's "exact domain match" algorithm implementation. We were, even after Panda and up to 4/5/2013 getting a significant amount of organic traffic for search terms such as "audiobooks online," "audio books online," and "online audiobooks." We no longer get traffic for these generic keywords. What I don't understand is why a UK company, www.audiobooksonline.co.uk/, with a very similar domain name, ranks #5 for "audio books online" and #4 for "audiobooks online" while we've almost disappeared from Google rankings. By any measurement I am aware of, our site should rank higher than audiobooksonline.co.uk. Market Samurai reports for "audio books online" and "audiobooks online" shows that our Web store is significantly "stronger" than audiobooksonline.co.uk but they show up on Google's first page and we are down several pages. I also checked a few titles on audiobooksonline.co.uk and confirmed they are using the same publisher descriptions we and many other online book / audiobook merchants do = duplicate content. We have never received notice that our Web store was being penalized. Why would audiobooksonline.co.uk rank so much higher than audiobooksonline.com? Does Google treat non-USA sites different than USA sites?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbohen0 -
My landing page changed in google's serp. I used to have a product page now I have a pdf?
I have been optimizing this page for a few weeks now and and have seen our page for up from 23rd to 11th on the serp's. I come to work today and not only have I dropped to 15 but I've also had my relevant product page replaced by this page . Not to mention the second page is a pdf! I am not sure what happened here but any advice on how I could fix this would be great. My site is www.mynaturalmarket.com and the keyword I'm working on is Zyflamend.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KenyonManu3-SEOSEM0 -
Google WMT Change of address.
Hey all. I've got two domain names. -rt112media.com -route112media.com http://rt112media.com is my main address. The preferred domain. My Google WMT account has 4 sites listed that I am a verified owner on. 1.)rt112media.com 2.)www.rt112media.com 3.)route112media.com 4.)www.route112media.com I recent changed the address in WMT for route112media.com to have the preferred domain rt112media.com. I did this on Nov 23. It is currently saying their is a request and I can withdrawl. Now I'm needing to set the preferred for www.rt112media.com to be rt112media.com but it will not let me because of the pending route112media.com. The problem is I'm getting a ton of errors under my www.rt112media.com diagnostics. I'm not getting any under rt112media.com but I am thinking it is still effecting my page rank. I have the 301's for all set up as a 301 wildcard to rt112media.com. They all redirect to the preferred domain I wan (rt112media.com.) Suggestions?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Route112Media0