Originally Posted by stor So the question here is did I missed out anything? Do I need to work on and create Google site maps? I have read the issues on this forum on Google site maps and wonder how can I checked if my images faces the same problem in Google search. Any help will be appreciated as I am quite lost on Google site maps.

Site maps are automatically done by SmugMug, you need do nothing. There is more info on Google Image Search here: Read from here down http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?...26#post1586326

Originally Posted by Andy Hi, ticket #265623 was answered at 930am ET, did you not get our reply? I'm going to answer your other questions now right here.

This is the reply I got. BTW, your help site mentioned reply should be within 2 hours and it gave me the impression that it is 24 hours basis. You are there morning now and I here midnight. You sound frustrated don't you?

[FONT=&quot]Hi Stor1463,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Thank you for contacting SmugMug.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I am so sorry you are having trouble. We just recently found out that right click protection is keeping users images from being found on Google searches. We have been working so hard at protecting your photos and realized the right click protection setting keeps your pictures from being found. Here is a post from Chris MacAskill giving a little more information on Dgrin about this recent find. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1586326&postcount=65[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]If you any other questions or problems please let us know.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]All the best,
Heather
SmugMug Support Hero
www.smugmug.com/help[/FONT]

Originally Posted by stor This is the reply I got. BTW, your help site mentioned reply should be within 2 hours and it gave me the impression that it is 24 hours basis. You are there morning now and I here midnight. You sound frustrated don't you?

Heh, sorry I'm not frustrated at all - I just want to help. Smuggy does sleep a little bit during the wee hours here in the US. But not long, typically 4 hours or so. I'm here right now for you and able to answer any follow ups you have.

Originally Posted by jfriend I wonder if a better name for it would be "right-click warning"?

Good idea, and maybe let Google start indexing them at the same time. I hope not too many customers would be dismayed by this.

Someone mentioned that images do well showing up in image search when they're embedded in a blog. I would think that could often have to do with the relevance of the blog, which can have many inbound links and relevant text to boost SEO.

We have been having lively discussions with Google about SEO for image search because, as John says, we could do more but we don't want to be accused of cloaking.

Originally Posted by Baldy ... Someone mentioned that images do well showing up in image search when they're embedded in a blog. I would think that could often have to do with the relevance of the blog, which can have many inbound links and relevant text to boost SEO. ...

I had mentioned that anytime searching for images the ones on my blog pop
up rather quickly but I can never find any from my site. Links in siggy.

Okay, the decision is we're going to let Google index images with right click protection. Working on the change now and we'll let you know when it's live.

The reasoning is the customers we've spoken to still want the right-click warning but also want Google to index their images even when they understand that it's another back door to foiling RCP, just like screen captures are.

We're also working on a number of other changes to indexing single images for Google image search that I wish I could talk about but can't at this time. But hopefully in the weeks and months ahead you'll see improvements wrt Google image search.

One thing that I can talk about is image URLs will soon end in your-image-name.jpg, which Google likes better than the current scheme.

Originally Posted by Baldy Okay, the decision is we're going to let Google index images with right click protection. Working on the change now and we'll let you know when it's live. The reasoning is the customers we've spoken to still want the right-click warning but also want Google to index their images even when they understand that it's another back door to foiling RCP, just like screen captures are.

Thank you!

--- Denise

Originally Posted by Baldy Okay, the decision is we're going to let Google index images with right click protection. Working on the change now and we'll let you know when it's live. The reasoning is the customers we've spoken to still want the right-click warning but also want Google to index their images even when they understand that it's another back door to foiling RCP, just like screen captures are. We're also working on a number of other changes to indexing single images for Google image search that I wish I could talk about but can't at this time. But hopefully in the weeks and months ahead you'll see improvements wrt Google image search. One thing that I can talk about is image URLs will soon end in your-image-name.jpg, which Google likes better than the current scheme.

Is there a reason that when using RCP you can't limit Google Images to only index the gallery thumbnails instead of the larger images? Just thinking that maybe this would then still provide a path to the gallery containing the larger image without creating another way to foil RCP. I agree that if someone really wants to steal an image RCP isn't going to help much, but why make it easy for the more "technically challenged" to do it.

Originally Posted by Bob_A Is there a reason that when using RCP you can't limit Google Images to only index the gallery thumbnails instead of the larger images? Just thinking that maybe this would then still provide a path to the gallery containing the larger image without creating another way to foil RCP. I agree that if someone really wants to steal an image RCP isn't going to help much, but why make it easy for the more "technically challenged" to do it.

Google tells us the bigger image we feed them, the more likely they are to index it. Thumbnails are pretty much guaranteed to be ignored. It's about the quality of experience they can provide their customers.

Originally Posted by Baldy Google tells us the bigger image we feed them, the more likely they are to index it. Thumbnails are pretty much guaranteed to be ignored. It's about the quality of experience they can provide their customers.

What size is feed Google? With stretchy and many monitor sizes it could be
any size. I would think most would want only a med to XL size feed
so the resolution wouldn't allow hi-rez prints only web viewable sizes.

They want 800x600, but we feed them smaller than that now. That's a big issue because smaller means less relevance.

Hi,

My understanding is that before submitting the sitemap, you need to establish ownership of the website. It's done in one of 2 ways:

* Place a file in the root named google.........html The . are for many hexadecimals
* In the headers, have a meta tag header <meta name="google-site-verification" content="....." /> ... is the big key.

My current setup:

* I have my own blog: http://www.foto-biz.com
* I have the subdomain: photos.foto-biz.com that points to the smugmug galleries/homepage.

According to Google, I need to submit a sitemap for each domain/subdomain. But before I can submit the subdomain: photos.foto-biz.com I need that google....html file in the subdomain root. How do I do that? Do I transfer it to you guys...?

Is there a better way?

Thanks

Originally Posted by pgman Hi, My understanding is that before submitting the sitemap, you need to establish ownership of the website. It's done in one of 2 ways: * Place a file in the root named google.........html The . are for many hexadecimals * In the headers, have a meta tag header <meta name="google-site-verification" content="....." /> ... is the big key. My current setup: * I have my own blog: http://www.foto-biz.com * I have the subdomain: photos.foto-biz.com that points to the smugmug galleries/homepage. According to Google, I need to submit a sitemap for each domain/subdomain. But before I can submit the subdomain: photos.foto-biz.com I need that google....html file in the subdomain root. How do I do that? Do I transfer it to you guys...? Is there a better way? Thanks

You put the appropriate meta tag in the head section of the advanced customization. Smugmug will then include that on every page on your site and Google will then believe that you own that domain.

Originally Posted by Baldy Google tells us the bigger image we feed them, the more likely they are to index it. Thumbnails are pretty much guaranteed to be ignored. It's about the quality of experience they can provide their customers.

I have 7000 images indexed (over 5 times the number of listed images) but none above 800 pixels are indexed.

I submitted the sitemap: http://photos.foto-biz.com/sitemap-index.xml and I get the following error:

/sitemap-base.xml.gz: status warning

The 3 warnings are:

1. URLs not followed: When we tested a sample of URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs redirect to other locations. We recommend that your Sitemap contain URLs that point to the final destination (the redirect target) instead of redirecting to another URL.	HTTP Error: 302
URL: http://photos.foto-biz.com/Other/Photographers/1*6534095_G2WZ5 
http://photos.foto-biz.com/Other/Photographers/1*6534095_G2WZ5

***********************************************************

2. URLs not followed: When we tested a sample of URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs redirect to other locations. We recommend that your Sitemap contain URLs that point to the final destination (the redirect target) instead of redirecting to another URL.	HTTP Error: 301
URL: http://photos.foto-biz.com/keyword 
http://photos.foto-biz.com/keyword

***********************************************************

3. URLs not followed: When we tested a sample of URLs from your Sitemap, we found that some URLs redirect to other locations. We recommend that your Sitemap contain URLs that point to the final destination (the redirect target) instead of redirecting to another URL.	HTTP Error: 301
URL: http://photos.foto-biz.com/keyword 
http://photos.foto-biz.com/keyword

What's causing the problems?

BTW, I set the Google verification-code through the header.


Thanks

Hi Andy

I went to Google Web Master and found this. It shows Site maps not found. Could you kinldy advice what should I do to get it up. Besides, I found about crawls errors. I am not certain how it is effecting my site but I have all right protection on for all my images.

Originally Posted by Andy Site maps are automatically done by SmugMug, you need do nothing. There is more info on Google Image Search here: Read from here down http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?...26#post1586326

Hi Stor

You've just missed it but I think it is there.

Your first image is of crawl errors, but the numbers are small and they could have happened for any number of reasons - I would just ignore it.

The second image is where you should be looking, but you are looking at the page for sitemaps that you have personally added and I don't believe you have added any. If you look at the right hand side of that image you will see 'Submissions by me(0), All(1)'. Click on 'All' and you should see the sitemaps that were automatically generated and hopefully it will be full of lots of your images :)

Rich

Originally Posted by MakeMeShutter I notice I now have red x's on all sitemaps. I have changed nothing. Is this related to something Smugmug is doing?

I suspect that you may be correct. I'm pretty much sure mine wasn't showing red 'x's three days ago but is now and the number of images indexed has also dropped slightly. They seem to be working on an issue with right click protection blocking images being indexed at the moment so it may be related. I would guess it will get fixed pretty quickly.

Edit: looks like it was very temporary. The red 'X's of doom have all gone :)


Are you using right click protection on your images then as that sounds like a very small number of images being indexed?

Rich

Originally Posted by denisegoldberg I'm with you on this. I still want a message on right click even though I know it is not even a small stumbling block. It serves as a reminder, nothing else. And I do want my images indexed by Google. --- Denise

DITTO!!!

Originally Posted by Baldy Apologies if I missed this, but it appears we do something that's non-obvious to most people. It sounds like we need to do a much better job of making it known, or we need to change it. And it is that when you turn on right click protection, we don't let Google index your images. The reason is it's a security back door. Google will index your image, but when people view them on Google's image search results, they'd be able to right-click and download from there. Another thing, which we're changing, is how the URL is formed without the original-image-name.jpg at the end. That change is in test right now and should help (the change will not be applied to hide owner galleries).

I hadn't seen this before. Wow. This explains a lot, as I just couldn't figure out why so few of my images were turning up on Google image searches, yet why some odd family images popped up at the top of certain searches (with my name or site name involved in the search). Since I have a lot of family images w/o RCP, that explains that. The odd thing to me is that I'm pretty sure I've asked this question in the past & was told that it wouldn't affect searches... so yes, I'm sure you're correct that people are not aware that this is the problem. I feel that if people have their Gallery Settings to "Let Google & the world find me" (or whatever that setting is!), Smug should change its search policies to just that... let the world find me, whether or not I have RCP on.

I understand & agree with what others observe, that RCP is far from fail-safe. But it's also true that it's a deterrent to plenty of casual viewers. Knowing that someone might copy some small versions off an image search would not keep me up at night near as much as the knowledge I'm going to all this work to get my stuff seen and not getting seen just because RCP is on! It would take a lot to convince me to ditch RCP from my more artistic galleries, but I'm very bummed to hear that's why the images aren't showing. I do wish at the same time that filenames would only show up in the URL if we want them to. I don't know if that's possible, but I really hate having to worry about my filenames being that public every time I write one. I know in some cases (when viewing fileinfo is allowed) they're visible anyway, but rarely in as public a way as a URL. Anyway, thank you for explaining this, as it answers a lot of questions I've had.