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

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      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. Technical SEO
    4. Image Search

    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.

    Image Search

    Technical SEO
    2
    3
    1332
    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.
    • Koki.Mourao
      Koki.Mourao last edited by

      Hello Community,

      I have been reading and researching about image search and trying to find patterns within the results but unfortunately I could not get to a conclusion on 2 matters. Hopefully this community would have the answers I am searching for.

      1) Watermarked Images (To remove or not to remove watermark from photos) I see a lot of confusion on this subject and am pretty much confused myself. Although it might be true that watermarked photos do not cause a punishment, it sure does not seem to help.

      At least in my industry and on a bunch of different random queries I have made, watermarked images are hard to come by on Google's images results. Usually the first results do not have any watermarks.

      I have read online that Google takes into account user behavior and most users prefer images with no watermark. But again, it is something "I have read online" so I don't have any proof.  I would love to have further clarification and, if possible, a definite guide on how to improve my image results.

      2)  Multiple nested folders (Folder depth)

      Due to speed concerns our tech guys are using 1 image per folder and created a convoluted folder structure where the photos are actually 9 levels deep. Most of our competition and many small Wordpress blogs outrank us on Google images and on ALL INSTANCES I have checked, their photos are 3, 4 or 5 levels deep. Never inside 9 nested folders.  
      So...

      A) Should I consider removing the watermark - which is not that intrusive but is visible?
      B) Should I try to simplify the folder structure for my photos?

      Thank you

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Koki.Mourao
        Koki.Mourao @Matt-Williamson last edited by

        Thank you very much. This is helpful.

        Sincerely,

        Koki

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Matt-Williamson
          Matt-Williamson last edited by

          Hi Mike

          On the watermark question I would personally remove the watermark as I believe you will find that whether watermarks impact your ranking or not putting people of clicking and interacting with your images is a negative.

          I would also do it from a quality point of view and I would draw your attention to Google's Guidelines on Image Publishing

          "Similarly, some people add copyright text, watermarks, or other information to their images. This kind of information won't impact your image's performance in search results, and does help photographers claim credit for their work and deter unknown usage. However, if a feature such as watermarking reduces the user-perceived quality of your image or your image's thumbnail, users may click it less often in search results."

          I imagine you have already had a look at this and I would recommend you go with your findings on this.

          Here are Google's guidelines to Image Publishing - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016

          I would also remove the watermark from you images in terms of wanting people to use images and then doing a reverse image search to find sites that use them. I would then request attribution if you haven't already been given it - great way to get exposure.

          I would also try to simplify your folder structure as 9 levels deep is very deep and likely to make Googles crawl of your images less efficient. I don't understand the reasoning of an individual image per folder - something more like images segmented by subject or even month like default WordPress would make more sense.

          Do you have an image sitemap in place? If not here is some more info from Google - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636?hl=en

          Hope this helps

          Matt

          Koki.Mourao 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

          • 21centuryweb

            Why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster

            Hi, I would like to ask why our website images not indexing in Google. I have shared the following screenshot of the search console.  https://www.screencast.com/t/yKoCBT6Q8Upw Last week (Friday 14 Sept 2018) it was showing 23.5K out 31K were submitted and indexed by Google. But now, it is showing only 1K 😞 Can you please let me know why might this happen, why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster.

            Technical SEO | | 21centuryweb
            0
          • KatherineWatierOng

            Loading images below the fold? Impact on SEO

            I got this from my developers. Does anyone know if this will be a SEO issue? We hope to lazy-load images below the fold where possible, to increase render speed - are you aware of any potential issues with this approach from an SEO point of view?

            Technical SEO | | KatherineWatierOng
            1
          • McCaldin

            Should i Disavow links from Secret Search Engine Labs

            Hi, I'm doing a link audit.  My sites' keyword rankings and organic traffic have been sent to the Phantom Zone since the last Penguin Update. I've got 70+ and counting follow backlinks to my main domain and one of the my subdomains from http://www.secretsearchenginelabs.com/; should i disavow them? There's a load of links to many recognisable sites in there and my instinct's all out of whack with this decision. I think that these links were all manually added by a link building company on our behalf. It does look manipulated to me but i'd like a second opinion before I dump all of those links. Thanks Thanks

            Technical SEO | | McCaldin
            0
          • IceIcebaby

            Is it important to include image files in your sitemap?

            I run an ecommerce business that has over 4000 product pages which, as you can imagine, branches off into thousands of image files. Is it necessary to include those in my sitemap for faster indexing? Thanks for you help! -Reed

            Technical SEO | | IceIcebaby
            0
          • WebServiceConsulting.com

            Can you noindex a page, but still index an image on that page?

            If a blog is centered around visual images, and we have specific pages with high quality content that we plan to index and drive our traffic, but we have many pages with our images...what is the best way to go about getting these images indexed? We want to noindex all the pages with just images because they are thin content... Can you noindex,follow a page, but still index the images on that page? Please explain how to go about this concept.....

            Technical SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com
            0
          • Devicelock

            HELP: Wrong domain showing up in Google Search

            So i have this domain (1)devicelock.com and i also had this other domain (2)ntutility.com, the 2nd domain was an old domain and it is not in use anymore. But when i search for devicelock on Google, the homepage devicelock.com does not exist. Only ntutility.com comes up. I asked one of the developer how the redirect is happening from the old domain to the new one and he told me its through a DNS forward. And there is no way to have an .htacess file to set up a 301 instead. Please help!

            Technical SEO | | Devicelock
            0
          • WEB-IRS

            No Search Results Found - Should this return status code 404?

            A question came up today on how to correctly serve the right status code on pages where no search results are found. I did a couple searches on some major eccomerce and news sites and they were ALL serving status code 200 for No Search Results Found http://www.zappos.com/dsfasdgasdgadsg http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=sdafasdklgjasdklgjsjdjkl http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=dfjakljgdkslagklasd&_sacat=0 http://www.cnn.com/search/?query=sdgadgdsagas&x=0&y=0&primaryType=mixed&sortBy=date&intl=false http://www.seomoz.org/pages/search_results?q=sdagasdgasdgasg I thought I read somewhere were it was recommended to serve a status code 404 on these types of pages.  Based on what I found above, all sites were serving a 200, so it appears this may not be the best practice. Any thoughts?

            Technical SEO | | WEB-IRS
            0
          • pauledwards

            Image Size for SEO

            Hi there I have a website which has some png images on pages, around 300kb - is this too much? How many kbs a page, to what extent do you know does Google care about page load speed? is every kb important, is there a limit? Any advice much appreciated.

            Technical SEO | | pauledwards
            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.