Not all images indexed in Google
-
Hi all,
Recently, got an unusual issue with images in Google index. We have more than 1,500 images in our sitemap, but according to Search Console only 273 of those are indexed. If I check Google image search directly, I find more images in index, but still not all of them.
For example this post has 28 images and only 17 are indexed in Google image. This is happening to other posts as well.
Checked all possible reasons (missing alt, image as background, file size, fetch and render in Search Console), but none of these are relevant in our case. So, everything looks fine, but not all images are in index.
Any ideas on this issue?
Your feedback is much appreciated, thanks
-
Fetching, rendering, caching and indexing are all different. Sometimes they're all part of the same process, sometimes not. When Google 'indexes' images, that's primarily for its image search engine (Google Images). 'Indexing' something means that Google is listing that resource within its own search results for one reason or another. For the same reasons that Google rarely indexes all of your web-pages, Google also rarely indexes all of your images.
That doesn't mean that Google 'can't see' your images and has an imperfect view of your web-page. It simply means that Google does not believe the image which you have uploaded are 'worthy' enough to be served to an end-user who is performing a certain search on Google images. If you think that gaining normal web rankings is tricky, remember that most users only utilise Google images for certain (specific) reasons. Maybe they're trying to find a meme to add to their post on a form thread or as a comment on a Social network. Maybe they're looking for PNG icons to add into their PowerPoint presentations.
In general, images from the commercial web are... well, they're commercially driven (usually). When was the last time you expressedly set out to search for Ads to look at on Google images? Never? Ok then.
First Google will fetch a page or resource by visiting that page or resource's URL. If the resource or web-page is of moderate to high value, Google may then render the page or resource (Google doesn't always do this, but usually it's to get a good view of a page on the web which is important - yet which is heavily modified by something like JS or AJAX - and thus all the info isn't in the basic 'source code' / view-source).
Following this, Google may decide to cache the web-page or resource. Finally, if the page or resource is deemed worthy enough and Google's algorithm(s) decide that it could potentially satisfy a certain search query (or array thereof) - the resource or page may be indexed. All of this can occur in various patterns, e.g: indexing a resource without caching it or caching a resource without indexing it (there are many reasons for all of this which I won't get into now).
On the commercial web, many images are stock or boiler-plate visuals from suppliers. If Google already has the image you are supplying indexed at a higher resolution or at superior quality (factoring compression) and if your site is not a 'main contender' in terms of popularity and trust metrics, Google probably won't index that image on your site. Why would Google do so? It would just mean that when users performed an image search, they would see large panes of results which were all the same image. Users only have so much screen real-estate (especially with the advent of mobile browsing popularity). Seeing loads of the same picture at slightly different resolutions would just be annoying. People want to see a variety, a spread of things! **That being said **- your images are lush and I don't think they're stock rips!
If some images on your page, post or website are not indexed - it's not necessarily an 'issue' or 'error'.
Looking at the post you linked to: https://flothemes.com/best-lightroom-presets-photogs/
I can see that it sits on the "flothemes.com" domain. It has very strong link and trust metrics:
Ahrefs - Domain rating 83
Moz - Domain Authority - 62
As such, you'd think that most of these images would be unique (I don't have time to do a reverse image search on all of them) - also because the content seems really well done. I am pretty confident (though not certain) that quality and duplication are probably not to blame in this instance.
That makes me think, hmm maybe some of the images don't meet Google's compression standards.
Check out these results (https://gtmetrix.com/reports/flothemes.com/xZARSfi5) for the page / post you referenced, on GTMetrix (I find it superior to Google's Page-Speed Insights) and click on the "Waterfall" tab.
You can see that some of the image files have pretty lard 'bars' in terms of the total time it took to load in those individual resources. The main offenders are this image: https://l5vd03xwb5125jimp1nwab7r-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/PhilChester-Portfolio-40.jpg (over 2 seconds to pull in by itself) and this one: https://l5vd03xwb5125jimp1nwab7r-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Portra-1601-Digital-2.png (around 1.7 seconds to pull in)
Check out the resource URLs. They're being pulled into your page, but they're not hosted on your website. As such - how could Google index those images for your site when they're pulled in externally? Maybe there's some CDN stuff going on here. Maybe Google is indexing some images on the CDN because it's faster and not from your base-domain. This really needs looking into in a lot more detail, but I smell the tails of something interesting there.
If images are deemed to be uncompressed or if their resolution is just way OTT (such that most users would never need even half of the full deployment resolution) - Google won't index those images. Why? Well they don't want Google Images to become a lag-fest I guess!
**Your main issue is that you are not serving 'scaled' images **(or apparently, optimising them). On that same GTMetrix report, check out the "PageSpeed" tab. Yeah, you scored an F by the way (that's a fail) and it's mainly down to your image deployment.
Google thinks one or more of the following:
- You haven't put enough effort into optimising some of your images
- Some of your images are not worth indexing or it can find them somewhere else
- Google is indexing some of the images from your CDN instead of your base domain
- Google is having trouble indexing images for your domain, which are permanently or temporarily stored off-site (and the interference is causing Google to just give up)
I know there's a lot to think about here, but I hope I have at least put you on the 'trail' a reasonable solution
This was fun to examine, so thanks for the interesting question!
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
-
Index problems
“The website http://www.vaneyckshutters.com/nl/ does not show in the index of Google (site:vaneyckshutters.com/nl/). This must be the homepage in the Netherlands. Previously, the page www.vaneyckshutters.com was redirected to /nl/. This page is accessible now with a canonical tag to http://www.vaneyckshutters.com/nl/ in the hope to let /nl/ be indexed. When we look at the SERPS for keyword ‘shutters’, the page http://www.vaneyckshutters.com/ is shown in Google.nl on #32 and in Belgium #3. Problem & question: Why is it that /nl/ has not been indexed properly and why is it that we rank with http://www.vaneyckshutters.com on ‘shutters’ instead the/nl/ page?”
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO1 -
Google how deal with licensed content when this placed on vendor & client's website too. Will Google penalize the client's site for this ?
One of my client bought licensed content from top vendor of Health Industry. This same content is on the vendor's website & my client's site also but on my site there is a link back to vendor is placed which clearly tells to anyone that this is a licensed content & we bought from this vendor. My client bought paid top quality content for best source of industry but at this same this is placed on vendor's website also. Will Google penalize my client's website for this ? Niche is HEALTH
Technical SEO | | sourabhrana1 -
No Index PDFs
Our products have about 4 PDFs a piece, which really inflates our indexed pages. I was wondering if I could add REL=No Index to the PDF's URL? All of the files are on a file server, so they are embedded with links on our product pages. I know I could add a No Follow attribute, but I was wondering if any one knew if the No Index would work the same or if that is even possible. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | MonicaOConnor0 -
How to stop my webmail pages not to be indexed on Google ??
when i did a search in google for Site:mywebsite.com , for a list of pages indexed. Surprisingly the following come up " Webmail - Login " Although this is associated with the domain , this is a completely different server , this the rackspace email server browser interface I am sure that there is nothing on the website that links or points to this.
Technical SEO | | UIPL
So why is Google indexing it ? & how do I get it out of there. I tried in webmaster tool but I could not , as it seems like a sub-domain. Any ideas ? Thanks Naresh Sadasivan0 -
Noindex Pages indexed
I'm having problem that gogole is index my search results pages even though i have added the "noindex" metatag. Is the best thing to block the robot from crawling that file using robots.txt?
Technical SEO | | Tedred0 -
Google Index Speed Opinions
Hello Everyone, Under normal circumstances, new posts to my site are indexed almost instantly by Google. I know this because an occasional search with quotation marks surrounding the 1st paragraph of text displays my newly published page. I use this tactic from time to time to ensure contributors aren't syndicating content. My question is this: I've noticed over the last day or so that my newly published articles are not yet indexed. For example, an article that was published over 24 hours ago does not appear to be indexed yet. Is this cause for concern? Is there an average wait time for indexation? XML issue? Thanks in advance for the help/insight.
Technical SEO | | JSOC0 -
Image map crawlability
Hey Mozzer's, I'm reviewing a moving site which utilizes an image map for their service areas. As I'm new to image mapping how should I diagnose them for crawlability, effectiveness, code (which appears correct using HTML & alt text tag), what should I be looking for, etc? I'm trying to determine the effectiveness of the image map links compared to including some regular lateral links on the page. Page: http://bit.ly/KOOtgN Thanks in advance for all advice and insights.
Technical SEO | | Bragg0 -
How to disallow google and roger?
Hey Guys and girls, i have a question, i want to disallow all robots from accessing a certain root link: Get rid of bots User-agent: * Disallow: /index.php?_a=login&redir=/index.php?_a=tellafriend%26productId=* Will this make the bots not to access any web link that has the prefix you see before the asterisk? And at least google and roger will get away by reading "user-agent: *"? I know this isn't the standard proceedure but if it works for google and seomoz bot we are good.
Technical SEO | | iFix0