No hits on reverse image search…

[Fungijus]

Hi all - I have a question that I hope someone can shed some light on…

 

I am in the habit of conducting reverse image searches on my images nowadays, Google, maybe Yandex if Google doesn’t provide any hits – especially where I have made a sale, or had a zoom or two.

 

Question is, on some of my images, including some where I have made sales (and not PU…), I still don’t get any hits – not even from the Alamy website. So, I am thinking that these images are not easy to find, as even searching against the specific image (as opposed to description) doesn’t return any hits. This, I assume must be limiting potential sales?

 

Does this mean that Alamy’s algorithms that make the image available to the web haven’t run? Or is there another reason why the images have no hits?

 

Image DB4HNH is an example

 

Country: United Kingdom
Usage: Editorial
Media: Magazine - print, digital and electronic
Print run: up to 500,000
Placement: Inside
Image Size: 1 page
Start: 01 October 2018
End: 01 October 2023
Duration: 3 months. Any placement: Inside or cover.

 

Thanks!

Jus.

 

[Matt Ashmore]

It's more down to Google's search algorithms I would think rather than Alamy's. It is potentially also down to how many keywords and how long a caption you added as these are the things that Google will see. Also, just because a license allows for on-line use, doesn't necessarily mean that the buyer did use it online. With the above license, they might simply have chosen to print it.

Edited September 23, 2019 by Matt Ashmore

[spacecadet]

Most of my licences never turn up online.

[John Richmond]

Probably because many of your images sold - like mine - are published in paper based books and magazines with no online archiving for Google to index.

[M.Chapman]

4 hours ago, Fungijus said:

Does this mean that Alamy’s algorithms that make the image available to the web haven’t run? Or is there another reason why the images have no hits?

 

 

Not all Alamy images seem to have been indexed. I've no idea why that is. Maybe it's an on-going process? A few years ago none of them used to appear in reverse image searches, but it's much better now.

 

Mark

[Fungijus]

16 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Not all Alamy images seem to have been indexed. I've no idea why that is. Maybe it's an on-going process? A few years ago none of them used to appear in reverse image searches, but it's much better now.

 

Mark

Thanks Mark - I guess though if they are not indexed, then they won't be appearing on any Google searches? This image has been up since 2012, so I would have thought that it would have been indexed by now? I have quite a few others in the same position also. 

Cheers,

J.

[Fungijus]

20 hours ago, Matt Ashmore said:

It's more down to Google's search algorithms I would think rather than Alamy's. It is potentially also down to how many keywords and how long a caption you added as these are the things that Google will see. Also, just because a license allows for on-line use, doesn't necessarily mean that the buyer did use it online. With the above license, they might simply have chosen to print it.

Thanks for this Matt. The image is 'Optimized', so there's every chance that it should have pulled through somewhere. Maybe I'll modify the caption slightly to see if this causes it to re-index.

 

And I take your point about the usage being print only, however I would still expect to get some hits directly from the Alamy site, even if I don't find out where it was actually used.

Cheers,

J. 

[Matt Ashmore]

17 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

 

Not all Alamy images seem to have been indexed. I've no idea why that is. Maybe it's an on-going process? A few years ago none of them used to appear in reverse image searches, but it's much better now.

 

Mark

 

Maybe this article helps; https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/70897?hl=en :

 

"The first step is finding out what pages exist on the web. There isn't a central registry of all web pages, so Google must constantly search for new pages and add them to its list of known pages. This process of discovery is called crawling.

Some pages are known because Google has already crawled them before. Other pages are discovered when Google follows a link from a known page to a new page. Still other pages are discovered when a website owner submits a list of pages (a sitemap) for Google to crawl. If you're using a managed web host, such as Wix or Blogger, they might tell Google to crawl any updated or new pages that you make."

 

[sb photos]

22 hours ago, Fungijus said:

Hi all - I have a question that I hope someone can shed some light on…

 

I am in the habit of conducting reverse image searches on my images nowadays, Google, maybe Yandex if Google doesn’t provide any hits – especially where I have made a sale, or had a zoom or two.

 

Question is, on some of my images, including some where I have made sales (and not PU…), I still don’t get any hits – not even from the Alamy website. So, I am thinking that these images are not easy to find, as even searching against the specific image (as opposed to description) doesn’t return any hits. This, I assume must be limiting potential sales?

 

 

Same here, a Google reverse image search finds some, but not all. The worrying thing is that earlier submissions show multiple Alamy hits in multiple languages, while others don't. Likely only potential customers searching via Alamy stand a chance of finding our images rather than via a search engine?

Edited September 24, 2019 by sb photos

[Fungijus]

23 hours ago, sb photos said:

 

Same here, a Google reverse image search finds some, but not all. The worrying thing is that earlier submissions show multiple Alamy hits in multiple languages, while others don't. Likely only potential customers searching via Alamy stand a chance of finding our images rather than via a search engine?

 

My point exactly!

Here are three of mine where Google doesn't show any matches.

 

 

 

I am going to try slightly modifying the description on the first two, to see if anything happens over the next few days that triggers the Google index crawling process. I'll let y'all know if anything happens....!

J.