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.
-
Corwin - that's awesome info - thanks for posting the results of your tests!
-
For people who find this and want the final results, these are what I see at my site, YMMV:
1. Links from image maps are indeed followed, Google crawls pages that are only accessible via the image map. nofollow also seems to be respected, unless Google just decided not to index these pages for another reason, but I doubt it.
2. The images are indeed indexed for Google images as one image containing the entire map. This image gets the "alt" value of the entire image, not the individual map segments.
I hope this is useful.
-
Thank you! Great info and suggestions. I'll take your advice and post here once I get the results, so others can benefit from it.
-
1 - Can't say regarding nofollow - you could always try adding rel="nofollow" to the <area> tag and give it a shot.
Whether the links are followed depends on whether they're indexed. In my opinion, they shouldn't have any issue crawling the links. If you look at the source code of a page with an image map on it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_map for example) you'll see that the links are pretty clearly listed (and in Chrome's source code view they're even hyperlinked - which alone suggests they should be crawling them just fine.)
That said, I have not tested this, and I can't find any references to actual testing done online.
If I were you, I would test this by doing the following:
- Create an image map somewhere on your site (we'll call it the Map Page).
- Link that image map to a 2nd page of the site that is not linked anywhere else on the Map Page.
- Feel free to tweet the URLs of both pages to speed up the indexation process.
- Go in to Google Webmaster Tools, and see if a link is reported to the 2nd Page from the Map Page.
- If there isn't, double check the cache date of the Map Page to see if it's after the image map was added to the page.
- If you go through that test, and GWT doesn't report a link from the Map Page to the 2nd Page, then I would go ahead and use the image map, but I would also add text links on the page to ensure your optimal site structure is in place.
- If GWT does report the link, then that seem sufficient to me, so long as you specify the alt and title text for each individual link since that will function as your anchor text.
2 - The image will probably be considered one image as far as indexing in Google Images (would be strange if they indexed portions of the image), however the alt and title attributes should behave more like multiple images.
3 - I would just do the test I described above and you should be set. Also, take a look at what popular websites using Image Maps do in this situation. National real estate listing sites are a common one for image maps IIRC.
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
-
Invest in a Image Sitemap - Yes or No?
Hey Mozers, 2 part question I'm reaching out to see if you all think Image Sitemaps are totally worth it for a big company. I can totally understand its value for a smaller mom & pop company. With a larger company they would have way more products so is it worth it having an image site map? I cant find examples of image sitemaps online. Would you be able to provide a website that is doing it? I can only find video sitemaps.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rpaiva0 -
Images Returning 404 Error Codes. 301 Redirects?
We're working with a site that has gone through a lot of changes over the years - ownership, complete site redesigns, different platforms, etc. - and we are finding that there are both a lot of pages and individual images that are returning 404 error codes in the Moz crawls. We're doing 301 redirects for the pages, but what would the best course of action be for the images? The images obviously don't exist on the site anymore and are therefore returning the 404 error codes. Should we do a 301 redirect to another similar image that is on the site now or redirect the images to an actual page? Or is there another solution that I'm not considering (besides doing nothing)? We'll go through the site to make sure that there aren't any pages within the site that are still linking to those images, which is probably where the 404 errors are coming from. Based on feedback below it sounds like once we do that, leaving them alone is a good option.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | garrettkite0 -
Is it worth putting images in your sitemap?
I am always trying to optimize our website and have came across adding images to the sitemap. Has anyone done this? Did it make a big difference?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Disadvantages of linking to uncompressed images?
Images are compressed and resized to fit into an article, but each image in the article links to the original file - which in some cases is around 5Mb. The large versions of the images are indexed in Google. Does this decrease the website's crawl budget due to the time spent downloading the large files? Does link equity disappear through the image links? Either way I don't think it's a very good user experience if people click on the article images to see the large images - there's no reason for the images to be so large. Any other thoughts? Thanks. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford0 -
Image optimization in 2013
hello post the google Image update ( http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2013/01/faster-image-search.html ) please could you let me know what the status of image optimization is and also what the best practices are? Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Vijay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vijayvasu0 -
Headline tag for images in Photoshelter
Hello! I use Photoshelter for my commercial photography website: http://www.ioansaidphotography.co.uk/ I'm trying to make it better re SEO and all that by filling as much information as I can. I'm using Picworkflow who give you a title, description and keywords for every picture.. But in Photoshelter's IPTC metadata editor, they put an SEO tag by Headline (essentially saying it's important) and not by title. Do you think it's good/useful/safe to use the info Picworkflow gave me for title and put it in Headline? PS: This is for the pictures individually and not the pages. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IoanSaid0 -
Duplicate Listings on Google Maps
About 3 weeks ago google created a duplicate listing for our law firm on google maps. In building links I have tried very hard to ensure that our address and company name was always listed identically. Our correct firm name and address is Feldman Feldman & Associates, PC 2221 Camino Del Rio South, Suite 201 inevitably somehow the new listing stated Camino Del Rio S, Ste 201 All of our reviews moved over to this new profile, I claimed it, changed it to make it the same reported it to Google. Google merged them. Now Google has created another profile this time the firm name and address matches ours exactly (South and Suite both spelled out), but all of the reviews have moved over except for the most recent one(s). I have claimed it again and reported it to google, changed the address. Google then created another listing. Our page rank for keywords has been hurt by this. any idea why this keeps happening suggestions? Here are the two pages. This is our original listing http://maps.google.com/maps/place?hl=en&cid=468564492130231259 This is the new one google self created that stole all our reviews, but is ranked very poorly for the keyword searches. http://maps.google.com/maps/place?&cid=468564492130231259
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jfeld2220