Sudden Drop in Organic Traffic through Image Search

[tigersohelll]

We've have been facing a strange issue with our Organic Image Search Traffic since July month, 10th July 2016 to be precise. There is a significant decline in our Organic Image Search Traffic that we can see in our Google Search Console Account, We have noticed a sudden drop (Almost 80%-90%) in our daily clicks through image search in Google Search Console, Does anyone here have any idea why this has happened suddenly though everything is same as it was before and we haven't done any changes in image names and images path.

IWPbQ

[GastonRiera]

Hi there,

It's known that image search is rather random than understandable. Also, there has been some movements in the algorithm in the past 5-6 weeks.
Check two of the most used sources:
Mozcast.com
Agoroo.com

Also, have you checked if what images where the one ranked? Is it possible that those images where updated? Or that the newly ranked are more optimized?
Have you noticed any changes in your server? Loading time might be a plausible cause.

Best Luck.
GR.

[EGOL]

The rankings in Google image search move up and down constantly in response to new images entering the competition and rankings adjustments for historic images.

To really determine what is happening you need to look at which images were bringing you traffic before the traffic loss and which of those images have lost traffic.  You can then go to the image SERPs and see how they rank today.

I believe that image optimization is a factor, but I mainly believe that visitor engagement is more important to the rankings of the images.  Those that are clicked and viewed a lot are promoted over those that are not.  There is not much that you can do about that exept produce more popular images.

If your image traffic has taken a massive loss it could be a result of infringement.  Spammers grab lots of popular images and place them on their site, hoping that they do well in the image search results and pull in traffic.  When they do that the traffic of the copyright owner tanks and the traffic of the infringer goes up.  Then if the copyright owner polices the image SERPs and files DMCA complaints, google will remove the images that are complained about and the traffic of the site hosting them will fall.  We file more DMCA complaints to image search than to any other type of search - and Google usually responds to them quickly.