Sphinn - Tactics for Improving Google Universal Search Results

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Tactics for Improving Google Universal Search Results

Went Hot: September 21, 2007 - 10:53 am
Posted By: ScottFish 654 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.engineworks.com)
Category: Google SEO

Take advantage of Google's Universal Search Results by optimizing your website to rank well using several different tactics. Check out these great tips!

8 Comments

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Comments

from ckata 654 days ago #

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Great post!

from qwerty 654 days ago #

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Does anyone have any actual evidence that the image's file name and title attribute make a difference. I know a lot of people are saying that's the case, but I've seen no test data to back it up.

from mbeharry 653 days ago #

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There might not be any physical evidence yet, but I just oversaw the re-naming of thousands of images for one client. In addition to changing anchor text and surrounding text.

The benefits of blanketing the image search with your photos is priceless.

If the file names are not used in the algo yet, then they will be in the future.

And, not many sites have given their photos logical, descriptive, key word rich names yet. So, right now there is a open window to be one of the first in almost every market.

from qwerty 653 days ago #

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That hasn't been my experience. I often give images descriptive names for my own benefit, and I haven't seen any evidence that it helps in rankings. What I have found to help, at least so far, are the title tag and the on-page content of the page on which the image appears -- basically, the same traits that help the page itself rank well.

from MattMcGee 653 days ago #

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The Title attribute is not part of the equation. Several people have tested this by putting gibberish in a title attribute, waited for the page to get crawled and indexed, and the page never appears on a search for the gibberish.

My experience is in line with qwerty's -- other on-page factors help the image do well, including a bold caption right above or below the image, the surrounding words, and traditional on-page SEO.

from Sem-Advance 652 days ago #

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I think you guys are missing the point of universal search. Your images videos camtasisas PDFs etc can show up in the organic results along with websites and blogs.

Naming conventions of your IP helps them to appear in the results when they match the user search query.

This has very little to do with SEO as we know it, and more to do with driving incremental traffic to the site.

Peace!

from qwerty 652 days ago #

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No, I understand. I'm simply stating that the testing I've done on images indicates that their file names don't appear to make a difference in rankings in image or universal searches.

from Sem-Advance 651 days ago #

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Well I doubt it would effect rankings. Since the IP would lack a great deal of what is required to rank well, IE: title tag, description, alt image text, structure, authority, links to the IP, external links (how would an image link out?) etc.

The naming conventions however help when looking at referal traffic from say Google Images

I wonder what would happen if you built anchor links from various blogs / websites to an image on a website......

;->