HEADS UP! New Direct Image URLs on SmugMug

Andy · April 26, 2011

Hi, a few days ago, we launched new image URLs live on the site.

First of all, our apologies for not getting some advance notice on this out to you folks that have really advanced customization hacks and have apps that formulate URLs.

You can read about the URL changes here: http://smu.gs/eFhoRq on The SmugMug Blog. I'm also going to repeat the info right here, for convenience.

We’ve rearranged your direct image URLs so that your filenames get tacked on to the end of every direct image link. This means your images will be more user- and SEO-friendly, but no less secure than before. As long as you remember to give your files descriptive names, you won’t need to do anything to get a little extra Google Juice.

New direct-image URLs will look like this now:

http://www.moonriverphotography.com/Galleries/Landscapes-for-Sale/i-WXsfbrn/0/X2/sunset-pfeiffer-beach-X2.jpg

This will also be the link that you're given by SmugMug if you use Share>Get A Link, so this change will be transparent to most everyone. If you have an app, or if you're used to changing URLs manually (like manipulating a -Ti to a -L for example, by hand), then you'll need to adjust to change the size in two places: in the above example, you'd change the X2 to say, L, in both places in the URL. Again, if you use Share button>Get a Link, we do this automatically for you.

Custom sizes work the same way, the custom size should be put into both places. More is explained on our help page, with examples, here.

What about my old links that I've embedded in my blog, or on a forum? They will continue to work as always. And you can manipulate an old URL the same way as you always have.

In your example URL, there's i-WXsfbrn - what the heck is that? This is the new imageKey. It is two characters longer than the old imageKey. We now don't show the imageID in the URL.

Please ask any questions here and I'll make sure to update the FAQs in post #1 (this posting).

TalkieT · April 26, 2011

Hmmm. You say we need to change in both places. I found that changing the middle size only was required, you end rewrote the url for me with the change to the second size id...

I'd say the second parameter was information only, to tag the filename with the size, It's not honoured by your system.

Cheers, N

jfriend · April 26, 2011

TalkieT wrote: »

Hmmm. You say we need to change in both places. I found that changing the middle size only was required, you end rewrote the url for me with the change to the second size id...

I'd say the second parameter was information only, to tag the filename with the size, It's not honoured by your system.

Cheers, N

If you only specify the first one, Smugmug will redirect to the proper URL, but that is a wasted extra roundtrip and slower performance. It's better to use the correct URL that does not require an extra redirect.

beardedgit · April 26, 2011

That second size parameter seems pretty redundant for link purposes, if it's there for other purposes it would be good to know what they are.

As a test, I've edited the second size parameter of a recent image and it still loads ok:

http://beardedgit.smugmug.com/Fellwalking/Day-Walks/YHA-Borrowdale-April-2011/i-pxD7Qzx/0/L/borrow003copy-you can put almost whatever you want here and it still loads the size dictated by the first size parameter so please tell us what this second size parameter actually does thanks in advance.jpg

jfriend · April 26, 2011

Andy wrote: »

Please ask any questions here and I'll make sure to update the FAQs in post #1 (this posting).

Andy, what I don't understand is what happened to imageIDs and imageKeys in the new URLs. In your example URL, there's i-WXsfbrn which doesn't look like either. The Smugmug API gives me imageIDs and imageKeys. Various javascript variables in a gallery page give me imageIDs and imageKeys. How would I construct a new SEO friendly URL from an imageID and an imageKey? Or can you no longer? Is i-WXsfbrn some kind of new ID? Is that new ID in the Smugmug API anywhere? I don't see any new IDs in the 1.3.0 API.

I'm also really bummed that NOBODY at smugmug HQ was clued in that a BIG architectural change like this might have customization ramifications. Not only is that a fail, but it scares the heck out of me for the implications of future changes. This should have been OBVIOUS that this might affect some customizations. This isn't a subtle change. Nobody even thought to ask people who are responsible for a lot of customizations. It definitely feels like people who customize their site are not even on the developer's radar because this should have been a no-brainer change to give people advance notice about and one short blog post would have been all it took to allow people to prepare. Please whack a couple people across the head and make sure that these types of changes don't come streaming out again with no advance notice, no time to assess and prepare and no documentation when they do arrive. This seems like such a no-brainer to consider the impact on customizations that I'm wondering if there isn't any intent at HQ to let customizers prepare for significant changes.

I also asked you a question in another thread about "future changes to gallery URLs" which was mentioned in the blog post which could definitely break other customizations (like my custom slideshow) and apps that use the API. Is something coming down the pipe there that may break other customizations?

Andy · April 26, 2011

TalkieT wrote: »

Hmmm. You say we need to change in both places. I found that changing the middle size only was required, you end rewrote the url for me with the change to the second size id...

I'd say the second parameter was information only, to tag the filename with the size, It's not honoured by your system.

Cheers, N

We recommend you change your hack or app to change the url in both places.

Andy · April 26, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

Andy, what I don't understand is what happened to imageIDs and imageKeys in the new URLs. In your example URL, there's i-WXsfbrn which doesn't look like either.

This is the new imageKey. It is two characters longer than the old imageKey. We now don't show the imageID in the URL.

Andy · April 26, 2011

beardedgit wrote: »

That second size parameter seems pretty redundant for link purposes, if it's there for other purposes it would be good to know what they are.

As a test, I've edited the second size parameter of a recent image and it still loads ok:g[/URL]

Yes it will - but we recommend changing it in both places. Or just use our Share>Get A Link and we'll do it automatically for you.

Erick L · April 26, 2011

Why can't we use example.com/photos/1234567_image-key.jpg without having to type it all? Now we have the ridiculously long not-so-nice URLs and short URLs which don't contain our site URL. If those URL are still working, why can't we just opt out of nicenames?

Andy · April 26, 2011

Erick L wrote: »

Why can't we use example.com/photos/1234567_image-key.jpg without having to type it all? Now we have the ridiculously long not-so-nice URLs and short URLs which don't contain our site URL. If those URL are still working, why can't we just opt out of nicenames?

You can, if you want to make a gallery unlisted, or even hide owner.

Examples:

Public Gallery:
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/Galleries/Landscapes-for-Sale/i-WXsfbrn/0/L/sunset-pfeiffer-beach-L.jpg

Unlisted Gallery:
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/photos/1012463810_K2Air-L-1.jpg

Hide Owner Gallery:
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/230348580_SFWL2-L.jpg

Erick L · April 26, 2011

Andy wrote: »

You can, if you want to make a gallery unlisted, or even hide owner.

But why can't we with a public gallery?

Andy · April 26, 2011

Erick L wrote: »

But why can't we with a public gallery?

You've been one of the biggest advocates for us to improve SEO - this is one of the things we're doing to achieve that for you

jfriend · April 26, 2011

Erick L wrote: »

But why can't we with a public gallery?

Good SEO needs the right content in the URLs and it needs all access to the content on the site to consistently use those URLs. It's bad for SEO if the same content is being accessed with many different URLs. So, Smugmug is trying to improve the form of the URLs to create better SEO and then route all access on the site through those new URLs. While they still support access using the older forms of URLs for backwards compatibility with links posted elsewhere, it's best to use the new form of the URLs and the SM generated pages will only use the new form of the URLs and if you want good SEO, you should use the new URLs in any links you post anywhere else. You can use the older form of URLs if you want (as they still work), you just won't get the best SEO.

Erick L · April 26, 2011

I know why the nicenames were introduced but their impact on SEO is a drop in the ocean. I even think they can be bad and I explained why before. What I don't get is that now, we have these new short URLs that don't even include our domain name when we have the old URLs that were short enough but the only way to use them with public photos is by typing them.

Since the old URLs are still working, I don't understand why we don't have the option to do without nicenames. I'd rather deal with one set of URLs that don't change when I move photos or galleries.

jfriend · April 26, 2011

Erick L wrote: »

I know why the nicenames were introduced but their impact on SEO is a drop in the ocean. I even think they can be bad and I explained why before. What I don't get is that now, we have these new short URLs that don't even include our domain name when we have the old URLs that were short enough but the only way to use them with public photos is by typing them.

Since the old URLs are still working, I don't understand why we don't have the option to do without nicenames. I'd rather deal with one set of URLs that don't change when I move photos or galleries.

What URL without your domain name? The only one I'm aware of is when Hide Owner is turned on and that feature is explicitly to hide your name.

Feel free to keep using the old form of the URLs if you want. It still works. You don't have to switch unless you want better SEO.

Allen · April 26, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

What URL without your domain name? The only one I'm aware of is when Hide Owner is turned on and that feature is explicitly to hide your name.

Feel free to keep using the old form of the URLs if you want. It still works. You don't have to switch unless you want better SEO.

Use the shorten thingie and post that in a blog. Your site name is not in the url for SEO.

NiceNames are a piece of #^$$# when you have to shorten them to fit the
character length limit.

jfriend · April 26, 2011

Allen wrote: »

Your site name is not in the url for SEO.

I'm not sure what you mean by this Allen. If your site name isn't in the URL, it won't be connected to your site SEO at all. It won't contribute plus or minus to your SEO because Google won't even know it's connected to your site. The shortener is just a referral to a longer URL and the search engine will see the longer URL that it gets referred to.

Allen · April 26, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

I'm not sure what you mean by this Allen. If your site name isn't in the URL, it won't be connected to your site SEO at all. It won't contribute plus or minus to your SEO because Google won't even know it's connected to your site. The shortener is just a referral to a longer URL and the search engine will see the longer URL that it gets referred to.

If I insert shortened url's all over my blog no one will see anything but that
link. So you're saying Google with look up the referral on every one of those?
And how does it know it's a referral? Did Smug register the basic link with
them?

jfriend · April 26, 2011

Allen wrote: »

If I insert shortened url's all over my blog no one will see anything but that
link. So you're saying Google with look up the referral on every one of those?
And how does it know it's a referral? Did Smug register the basic link with
them?

When Google fetches the contents of the shortened URL (to see what content it is), the web server returns a 302 result code and a new location (and no content other than the new URL) which means that the contents have been moved to a new location (referred to as a "redirect"). Google then looks up the content on the new location which can be the full URL. Since shortened URLs are used all over the web now (particularly in Twitter), this is the somewhat standard of implementing them and Google is well acquainted with how to follow them.

Allen · April 26, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

When Google fetches the contents of the shortened URL (to see what content it is), the web server returns a 302 result code and a new location (and no content other than the new URL) which means that the contents have been moved to a new location (referred to as a "redirect"). Google then looks up the content on the new location which can be the full URL. Since shortened URLs are used all over the web now (particularly in Twitter), this is the somewhat standard of implementing them and Google is well acquainted with how to follow them.

Thanks for the explanation. Good to know.

Erick L · April 26, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

When Google fetches the contents of the shortened URL (to see what content it is), the web server returns a 302 result code and a new location (and no content other than the new URL) which means that the contents have been moved to a new location (referred to as a "redirect"). Google then looks up the content on the new location which can be the full URL. Since shortened URLs are used all over the web now (particularly in Twitter), this is the somewhat standard of implementing them and Google is well acquainted with how to follow them.

Twitter isn't exactly an exemple when it comes to SEO. URLs without keywords have been around forever and it never stopped sites from being well ranked. One thing Google likes is stability and the old URL form provided that. It was a huge selling point for me. With the nicenames, every time one moves a photo or gallery, Google has to find it again. That's really bad.

jfriend · April 26, 2011

Erick L wrote: »

Twitter isn't exactly an exemple when it comes to SEO. URLs without keywords have been around forever and it never stopped sites from being well ranked. One thing Google likes is stability and the old URL form provided that. It was a huge selling point for me. With the nicenames, every time one moves a photo or gallery, Google has to find it again. That's really bad.

We're talking about direct image links here, not general clickable links. If you want direct image links to rank in Google Image Search, then you HAVE to give Google some idea what's in the image since they don't yet examine the image itself and figure that out (someday perhaps). Best way, put something meaningful in the URL (particularly a good filename). There are other ways, but in a page with lots of images, Google can't very easily associate content on the page with any particular image since there's no way to know if the images in the gallery are all about the same content or not.

Allen · April 26, 2011

That would be an absolute nightmare changing each filename before upload. That's why this url change is completely useless to me. I have captions and keywords on every photo, why isn't that good enough? The photos are found from my blog very quickly, I add title and alt tags with the name.

jfriend · April 27, 2011

Allen wrote: »

That would be an absolute nightmare changing each filename before upload. That's why this url change is completely useless to me. I have captions and keywords on every photo, why isn't that good enough? The photos are found from my blog very quickly, I add title and alt tags with the name.

These changes are mostly for Google image search. When Google is indexing an image, they are trying to find things that they know are attributed to just that image (not necessarily to the host web page). They may or may not know that your keywords and captions are associated with that particular image because those things are in the web page along with a bunch of other images. Ideally they would know that, but it may not be that obvious to them.

The ONE piece of information that is unambiguously associated with an image are the words in the URL since that URL belongs uniquely to that image. I don't manually rename my images either (I have date codes in the filename for date sorting), but having my category, sub-category and gallery name in the URL is useful for putting my images in the right part of Google's index. Before this change, none of those words were in the image URL. Now, if Google finds my image in a blog or on a forum, it will know more about it than it did before. It remains to be seen how much this will help Google Image search, but since it's been historically bad on Smugmug, I think lots of folks are glad that Smugmug is trying to address it.

I doubt that any of this has much to do with the regular Google web page search since Google has lots of stuff to go on there that in the web page itself (including keywords and captions and category and sub-category names already) so these changes probably don't make much (if any) difference there.

These changes are mostly about Google Image search. If you don't care about Google Image search, then you'll just have to learn when to do something different with the new URL style and move on. If you do care about Google Image search, then hopefully this will help get better search results when searching for images that are on Smugmug somewhere. Time will tell how much it helps.

Doug_C · April 27, 2011

Allen wrote: »

The photos are found from my blog very quickly, I add title and alt tags with the name.

Confess I've never fully understood why my Blog appears in Google search no problems but not SM site

Also thought the filename was going to automatically appear on SM URL and it would be retrospective :nono

beardedgit · April 27, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

... but having my category, sub-category and gallery name in the URL is useful for putting my images in the right part of Google's index. Before this change, none of those words were in the image URL.

(my underlining)

I'm not so sure that that underlined bit applies to all of us...

The image-link format for my pics uploaded pre-Saturday was:
Domain / category / subcategory / gallery name / filename / SM-generated code - size - revision (if > 0) . file extension

For example: http://beardedgit.smugmug.com/Astronomy/My-Astropics/Lunar-pics/1222524039bigmoonk3v2reg/1222524039_hkF7k-X3-1.jpg

The image-link format for one of my pics uploaded post-Saturday is:
Domain / category / subcategory / gallery name / SM-generated code / revision / size / filename - size . file extension

For example: http://beardedgit.smugmug.com/Fellwalking/Day-Walks/YHA-Borrowdale-April-2011/i-pxD7Qzx/0/L/borrow003copy-L.jpg

From this, it's evident that, for some of us, category, subcategory and gallery name were in there prior to the most recent change during which the dual size parameter thing was introduced.

denisegoldberg · April 27, 2011

Allen wrote: »

That would be an absolute nightmare changing each filename before upload. That's why this url change is completely useless to me. I have captions and keywords on every photo, why isn't that good enough? The photos are found from my blog very quickly, I add title and alt tags with the name.

I'm with you Allen - there is no way I'm going to change every filename before upload. My blog photos are found immediately, and that's with the addition of alt tags only. My photos on smug? There are a few, but they are just the tiny versions of the photos. Keywords seem to make no difference in the visibility of the images.

--- Denise

Andy · April 27, 2011

Doug_C wrote: »

Confess I've never fully understood why my Blog appears in Google search no problems but not SM site

Also thought the filename was going to automatically appear on SM URL and it would be retrospective :nono

I think you're probably speaking about Google Image Search. We've made massive changes recently along these lines, and you will see better results there. And, if you use descriptive filenames, even better ones

Erick L · April 27, 2011

jfriend wrote: »

If you want direct image links to rank in Google Image Search, then you HAVE to give Google some idea what's in the image since they don't yet examine the image itself and figure that out (someday perhaps).

Google uses text around the image, anchor text and a bunch of other things. In my experience, those weigh alot more than filenames. One thing is sure with the nicenames, making structural change to your site WILL hurt your rank. I've done it and lost, twice. But what do I know? I only have 6600 images indexed and routinely get 2-3 images on first page of Image Search, and did so before nicenames.

RogersDA · April 27, 2011

Does this change affect all previous photos when you choose "Get a Link" from the share menu?

I just looked at some older images and their share links were in the old format:

The image above, however, has a share link almost in the new format. The image above is provided with the link as

http://www.greyleafphoto.com/photos/i-5Q2fZPk/0/L/i-5Q2fZPk-L.jpg

Notice that the --photos-- in the new link is not the nicename/gallery hierarchy name for this particular gallery which is

http://www.greyleafphoto.com/Other/Photos-Shared/XXXXXXX-YYYYY/

Or am I missing something?

Andy · April 27, 2011

RogersDA wrote: »

Notice that the --photos-- in the new link is not the nicename/gallery hierarchy name for this particular gallery which is

Or am I missing something?

That gallery is unlisted

HEADS UP! New Direct Image URLs on SmugMug

Comments