Pop up image info for search engines.

[TobyH]

Hi all,

Thought I'd post for more questions on this subject here rather than start a new thread.

I'm still having frustrating experiences with WD6 / images and trying to get them recognised by search engines. On the Birds Gallery page 2 of my site (http://www.tobyh.myzen.co.uk/) i made sure I renamed the images as the original filename was being ignored and converted to a number such as 10.jpg. When i make sure that I have added a "name", this shows up in the source code for the page for the initial thumbnail, but when expanded as a popup image it's stripped away again.

More importantly, I don't seem to be able to add any meta info for my images. I must be missing something here. It's important that search engines have information to find my images but when I search for "Juvenile sparrow at pondside" for instance the image just doesnt show in the search responses, In fact alot of the responses are just rubbish and irrelevant.

What on earth am i doing wrong? I'm on the point of giving up on WD which is a shame as it just doesn't seem to cope with this.

I'm sure I can't be the only photographer that uses WD and has a similar site setup, how do others manage it?

Many thanks in advance.

TobyH

[covoxer]

I wonder why do you want your full size pop up images to be exported with any specific filename? If it's for search purposes, then, obviously, you want the search engine to send people to the page that contains your image, right? And that page contains the thumbnail image which you may assign any file name you want.
Another thing is that you should really use "alt" property to describe your images for better search results (I suppose this is what you mean by the "meta info").

[TobyH]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes I want people to be directed to the page by any means possible. I do indeed mean the alt text although this clearly isn't picked up by the search engines. If i search using information that i have used in the "alt" property field, my images aren't found and that is my main issue. How do I make it so that information about the image, and not just the name of the image, may be picked up by search engines. Where does that text go that it can be found? Is the issue with Highslide Editor being used for pop-ups as opposed to flat images?

*edit to add* With photography images it isn't unusal for people to be searching for specific images which is why I'm keen for the images to be "searchable" as well as the normal page info and image names. That said, even the Alternative names that i've added in for images are not found by the search engines even though textual content that I have added later has been.

Appreciate any help

TobyH

[covoxer]

Have you referenced your site in any way so that search bots have a chance to actually find and index it?
If so, how much time have you given them before you started your search attempts?

[TobyH]

Covoxer,

Thanks for replying again.

I have not referenced my site at all. This is my first site I've created so most of it is new to me (how can you tell!) but as Google had found it and the analytics page is showing visits from and via search engines I assumed they were getting there by their own devices. I take it i've missed a trick here. Can you point me to a thread or offer advice how I carry this out please?

Appreciate your ongoing help.

TobyH

[covoxer]

I have checked your site. Not all pages of it are indexed already. Also Google is reluctant to use some of it in general search. However, at least some pages are indexed and Google is able to recognize the alt attributes you have used. For example, go to the Google image search and enter following:

http://www.tobyh.myzen.co.uk Four Spotted Chaser

It will find your images in the Dragonflies and Damselflies Gallery 1. This page is already indexed.