Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Google Image Search - Is there a way to influence the related icons at the top of the image search results?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Google Image Search - Is there a way to influence the related icons at the top of the image search results?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    5
    1756
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • JaredBroussard
      JaredBroussard last edited by

      Google recently added related icons at the top of the image search results page. Some of the icons may be unrelated to the search. Are there any best practices to influence what is positioned in the related image icons section?  Thank you.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • Dr-Pete
        Dr-Pete Staff @JaredBroussard last edited by

        Don't have an exact date, but the UI feature is relatively new. I agree with @effectdigital that this is a general capability that Google has been building/expanding for a while. It's helpful to look at that underlying logic, as it will spawn new features over time.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • effectdigital
          effectdigital @JaredBroussard last edited by

          I don't personally think so, but some will disagree. It's existed on a functional level (Google drawing relationships between trending entities, and what images it should show) for many years. Throughout the years there have been various search experiments which make some of this information visible to Google's end users, but this is the first one in a long time which has gained any kind of usage

          The technology is probably highly related to Google's "people also search for" facility on their standard results, which seems to come and go over the years (sometimes remaining accessible to JS-disabled browsers, even when standard end-users can no longer access the technology)

          Some will say it's shiny and new, certainly this particular implementation is a little green. Overall though, no it's not really new technology (just a new spin on it)

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • JaredBroussard
            JaredBroussard last edited by

            Thank you so much for the informative and detailed answer.  Is the related image search a new feature in the results?

            effectdigital Dr-Pete 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • effectdigital
              effectdigital last edited by

              Yes there is, in fact there's a way to influence ALL of the images which are displayed, but it's usually costly and time-intensive

              For  example, look at this Google search query:

              https://www.google.com/search?q=frozen&tbm=isch

              ... this used to contain loads of pictures of frozen foods and frozen landscapes. Now it's all about a Disney movie! Another good query is "Matrix" which (for image results) used to be very technical, but for over a decade it's been dominated by the Matrix movie franchise

              If you create such an online storm, that you 'become' the trend, you can 'take over' Google's image results. Sometimes this only lasts a short while, sometimes it lasts well over 10 years

              The 'related' images that run along the top (which can sometimes be derivatives, e.g: 'related movies', or instead they can be search narrowing facilities, e.g: 'frozen foods' as opposed to the generic 'frozen' results) - can be influenced. Usually the related images, are 'runner up' trends that didn't quite manage to dominate Google's results, yet which still count as distinct and highly popular search entities

              This one is quite a good example: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=automobile - there are related images for specific vehicles, titans in the automobile industry (Henry Ford) / historic, even stuff like 'vector' which covers digital automobile art

              Your best bet at influencing which things appear along the top, is to influence which commonly-related pictures people ALSO search for when they use Google. Unfortunately, that's not easy at all and often involves colossal production and / or marketing budgets which extend offline in a big way

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Pank0077

                Website ranking stuck on 2nd page of google. How to bring it in top 10 position??

                Hi I am working on a site indianhomeappliances.in that for search terms such as 'best washing machine in india' appears near the top of the 2nd page of Googl for url https://indianhomeappliances.in/best-washing-machine-in-india/ When looking at what is listed on the 1st page for 'best washing machine in india' I would appreciate any advice/guidance on what else could be done to give the site a final push to get on the 1st page of search results. I have made more than 60 backlinks along with sites from competitor analysis via moz for this page Looking at the sites that are on the 1st page I cant understand why many of them are ranking higher than me? Any insight and plan of attack would be most appreciated from any  search experts on the forum. My website is 2.5 months old. Many Thanks

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Pank0077
                0
              • Mat_C

                How do internal search results get indexed by Google?

                Hi all, Most of the URLs that are created by using the internal search function of a website/web shop shouldn't be indexed since they create duplicate content or waste crawl budget. The standard way to go is to 'noindex, follow' these pages or sometimes to use robots.txt to disallow crawling of these pages. The first question I have is how these pages actually would get indexed in the first place if you wouldn't use one of the options above. Crawlers follow links to index a website's pages. If a random visitor comes to your site and uses the search function, this creates a URL. There are no links leading to this URL, it is not in a sitemap, it can't be found through navigating on the website,... so how can search engines index these URLs that were generated by using an internal search function? Second question: let's say somebody embeds a link on his website pointing to a URL from your website that was created by an internal search. Now let's assume you used robots.txt to make sure these URLs weren't indexed. This means Google won't even crawl those pages. Is it possible then that the link that was used on another website will show an empty page after a while, since Google doesn't even crawl this page? Thanks for your thoughts guys.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
                0
              • mirabile

                Image Audit: Getting a list of *ALL* Images on a Site?

                Hello! We are doing an image optimization audit, and are therefore trying to find a way to get a list of all images on a site.  Screaming Frog seems like a great place to start (as per this helpful article:  https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-perform-an-image-optimization-audit), but unfortunately, it doesn't include images in CSS.  😞 Does the community have any ideas for how we try to otherwise get list of images? Thanks in advance for any tips/advice.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile
                0
              • seoanalytics

                Text over image

                Hello, I am creating an overlay on a image. Is it ok to write on this overlay in html or it is better to have the text not on a image for google and other search engines ? Thank you,

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics
                0
              • snj_cerkez

                Bulk reverse image search?

                Hi, i have a couple fashion clients who have very active blogs and post lots of fashion content and images. Like 50+ images weekly. I want to check if these images have been used by other sources in bulk, are there any good reverse image search tools which can do this? Or any recommended ways to efficiently do this for a large number of images? Cheers

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | snj_cerkez
                0
              • 94501

                Null Alt Image Tags vs Missing Alt Image Tags

                Hi, Would it be better for organic search to have a null alt image tag programatically added to thousands of images without alt image tags or just leave them as is. The option of adding tailored alt image tags to thousands of images is not possible. Is having sitewide alt image tags really important to organic search overall or what? Right now, probably 10% of the sites images have alt img tags. A huge number of those images are pages that aren Thanks!

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 94501
                0
              • fablau

                Number of images on Google?

                Hello here, In the past I was able to find out pretty easily how many images from my website are indexed by Google and inside the Google image search index. But as today looks like Google is not giving you any numbers, it just lists the indexed images. I use the advanced image search, by defining my domain name for the "site or domain" field: http://www.google.com/advanced_image_search and then Google returns all the images coming from my website. Is there any way to know the actual number of images indexed? Any ideas are very welcome! Thank you in advance.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
                1
              • corwin

                Image Maps

                Hey forum, I'm curious about Image Maps. Few things I'm not sure about: 1. Will the links be followed? If so, will Google respect rel="nofollow"? 2. Will the image be considered 1 image? (indexed as image, etc.) Or will each map segment be treated as a separate image? 3. Any other SEO pros\cons to consider when adding an image map to an existing page? Thanks, Corwin.

                Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | corwin
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.