Image Duplicates - Does Google Penalize on this?
-
Hi Mozzers,
I have some doubts on the images hosted on my site. I have a single image on the website coming from 3 different locations. The locations are:
img.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg
img1.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg
www.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg
Now, these 3 are the same images with the same Title (they currently do not have an Alt Tag). Now, the 2 sub-domains when opened without any internal URL, redirects to the main domain.
For instance, if I access img.mydomain.com it 301 redirects to www.mydomain.com but if I access img.mydomain.com/site/default/serivces.jpg I will get the image and it does not redirect. I have checked Google Image search and the full path on the sub-domain of the image is being indexed and crawled by Google Image bot.
Now, this is true for both the sub-domains which act as CDN for the images. If Google does crawl all the locations which have the same image, does it cause a duplicate issue for it?
I know that if it was content, I would be in trouble but does image also has the same implications. I am planning for image optimization and faced with this situation.
Any answers?
Cheers,
-
Cheers Nagul!
Give it a go. And let me know when you get ready to publish it and I'll share it around. It would really be quite a useful topic to learn about.
-
Let me try and give it a shot...it might be my 1st SEOMoz article. Good idea...Cheers Jesse.
-
Looks like there is enough interest here for a full blog entry on image sitemaps. Nakul? Anyone?
-
Thanks Nakul. That solves the issue.
Cheers,
-
Claudio, I would recommend doing a separate images only sitemap in the right format. See these links for more details:
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=178636
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/adding-images-to-your-sitemaps.html
-
Akhil, at any given point, there's only 1 of those 3 URLs of the images that would appear on the site. I would therefore only choose 1, the one that is primary / most important to you.
-
Jesse, yes, I would recommend doing this for any site with a considerable number of images. If you want your images to be found, it won't hurt to do an image sitemap. Definitely recommended. Google webmaster console then gives you a good read on how many of the images you submitted are already indexed as well as a count of the pages those images are on, that are indexed.
-
Thanks for the response Nakul. So, in the image sitemap, would you recommend to add all the locations of the images or should I just mention only one. If one, which should be that and any reasons for choosing the same. If this does not cause a duplicate issue, it is fine with me.
For better indexation I can certainly have a sitemap but would like to know on how to go about this?
Cheers,
-
Dear Nakul,
About the image sitemap, what do you recommend :
1. use the attribute on the current sitemap withing the prop or build a separate sitemap for images.
To be honest Im not sure what is the best way and Im worry about sitemap related issues
Waiting your response
Claudio
-
Nakul, would you recommend this practice to all sites with a decent number of images? Or is it only important in this case?
-
Do you have an Image Sitemap created and submitted in your webmaster console ? If not, I would suggest you do that. Other then that, if I were you, I wouldn't worry too much about this being an issue at the moment. Google is smart enough to understand this as a CDN situation. As I said above, doing an Images XML sitemap should be all you need to do in this regard. I hope this helps.
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
-
Ranking App Store page in Google
Hey - has anyone had any experience in getting their App Store listing page to rank highly in Google for one of their primary keywords? If so, have you been successful and have you any pointers?
Image & Video Optimization | | GrowTraffic0 -
Meta Tags for Images in Multiple Galleries
For a while now we've had an outside SEO consultant as well as having me in-house doing a variety of work. One of the things our consultant would do was writing up optimized alt & title tags for the image galleries on our ecommerce sites. Recently what came up was what to do when a image appears in multiple galleries (e.g. an image of a bedroom could appear in both the bedrooms gallery & the accent wall gallery). We're not sure whether it would be best practices to use the same exact alt & title tags for an image in all the galleries it appears in or whether that would be too much duplication and each gallery should have different tags despite being the same image. None of it is being done in a deceptive manner, we're just been tailoring how we explain the image based on the specific gallery, landing page, etc. Our consultant is saying that an image should always have the same tags across the entirety of the site but I'm more of the mind that varying them by specific page would help images more readily rank for multiple relevant terms. Any advice?
Image & Video Optimization | | MikeRoberts0 -
How do I improve positioning in Google Images?
Looking around in Webmaster tools today and I noticed we have hundreds of thousands of impressions in Google Images, but a very low CTR. I understand normal SEO, but what about increasing rank in Google Images? It is hard to get links straight to an image, and we already use proper alt tags. Any other ideas?
Image & Video Optimization | | EcommerceSite0 -
Taking control over Google Places and Google+ Pages?
Hi we have a client who has about 40 different stores around the country. Most of the stores have their own Google+ Pages or Google Places. We want to take control of all 40 stores from a centralized location. So we can control their Google+ Pages/Google Places to improve them, and keep them uniformed with each other.How/Can can we do this? Does Google provide any way to do this? Thanks, Mark
Image & Video Optimization | | MBASydney0 -
Issues claiming businesses via Google+ places?
Is anyone else dealing with issues claiming a business location on Google places? After already going through the process of claiming our business locations and verifying ownership. It seems that we have to do it again for google+ places. I don't want to create a duplicate of the business, and i'm not sure If I should delete it from my places account, before trying to claim it again on google places. Have you dealt with this issue, or is it new to you as well?
Image & Video Optimization | | Nola5040 -
Setting Up Localized City Pages and Duplicate Content issues
We are setting up landing pages on our site that will cater to specific cities, in an effort to be more relevant to the users in those cities and also capture more localized traffic. These regional pages will each have a unique paragraph at the top, but below that is a sentence or two about each product line that would be difficult to rewrite with quality more than 10 - 15 times. Would the paragraph at the top of the page be enough unique content (about 4-5 sentences)? Obviously the duplicate content wouldn't be to my advantage, but is it really necessary to rewrite the other sentences about the product lines? What's the most efficient method to complete this project in a whitehat fashion?
Image & Video Optimization | | InetAll0 -
Google Places Local Submission
Hello We're going to upload a bulklisting to Google Places for multiple locations. However, there are existing Google places listings for these locations. The bulklisting is being used to undertake a refresh of all the existing data. How do we go about updating the existing data i.e. do we have to delete the existing information prior to submitting the bulkload, or does a new submission over write the existing data. In addition, how does Google Places verify a bulkload submission i.e. do they make contact with the designated business owner. How long does such a process actually take (roughly!). I know some of this is touched on in the Goolge Places help section, but it is not clear and I don't want to get this wrong for obvious reasons. Thanks in advance for your assistance. Rgds Neil
Image & Video Optimization | | mccormackmorrison0 -
Will Google Places put ranking weight on google reviews instead of 3rd party now?
WIth the visual update to Google Places over the past 2 days do you think that Google reviews will become a higher ranking factor as compared to 3rd party reviews. The research I have done shows that 3rd party reviews seem to correlate better with higher rankings..Any thoughts on what might be coming down the road?
Image & Video Optimization | | NiftyMarketing0