Optimizing Images for Search Engines

By Grant Crowell , December 28, 2006

One of the more potentially advantageous yet wholly underused areas for optimization is in image search engines. Yet while site owners and merchants are more often seeing their images show up in the regular search results, few have come to understand the benefits of image search optimization. And for professional optimizers, it requires a much broader understanding and specialization over what traditional search allows.

A special report from the Search Engine Strategies conference, December 6th, Chicago, IL.

Image search, by one definition, is query results, accompanied by thumbnail graphics and supplanted by contextual information, that best match users' search queries. Such information can be generated and submitted by the image creator, by site owner where the image resides, or by 3rd party reviewers.

Places where image search results appear, and are indexable into general search engines' contextual results, include:

The panel, consisting of both image search specialists and search engine product managers, concurred that image search is the fastest growing vertical in the search arena today. Statistics from Hitwise show it to achieve 90% growth year after year, with over 360,000,000 searches per month across the top search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN, and AOL. All in the "Big 5" have a search vertical dedicated specifically to image results, with 3 of them (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) integrating images into some contextual search results.

Within Google, image search is the leading vertical by far.

"Image search results are being pushed up more and more into the contextual (web) search results, and to improve usability," said Chris Smith, Head of Technology and Development of SuperPages.com by Idearc Media.

The image search engine leaders

Of the "Big 5" in the contextual search arena, Google enjoys a wide lead over its competitors. Statistics produced from Hitwise show Google image search to have approximately 72% of all image searches. Google easily holds the largest market share of searches for any search vertical, with its image vertical search even outnumbering the overall total searches for both Ask and AOL combined.

Both Liana Evans, Search Marketing Manager for Commerce360, and Smith attribute Google's dominance to several factors: its already large database and length of time in the marketplace, its dedication to its vertical properties, and its easy access for users to submit images.

Adding to the list of Google advantages in this vertical is its 'Enhanced Image Search' feature, a new feature found in Google's Webmaster Tools section. It allows site owners additional optimization capabilities with images, by allowing other people (volunteers) do the optimization for you. Site owners participate in the program by clicking the "enable enhanced image search" link for one's site. It then submits the photos found on the owner's site into its image program. The next step allows participating users to tag the images for the site owner. Two users will see the same image and attempt to tag the image with keywords; with users receiving points for matching tags.

"It's a free way of getting even more keyword signals for Google," said Smith. "It may be seen as a fairly authoritative way for image reference and may be ranking well in Google's image search results."

"People love participating in the enhanced image search; we've had great success with it so far," said Vanessa Fox, Product Manager for Google. Smith, however opined that its continued participation may depend on Google's ability to provide added incentives for users.

The panelists agreed that image search optimization is a necessity for merchants to incorporate into their marketing plans. "Shoppers are visual. They simply need to see what they're buying," said Evans. She also said she regarded image optimization as "the next frontier of search for merchants."

According to Evans, image search optimization offers the following advantages:
Evans attests that features natural to image search—easier to optimize, free inclusion, and less competition from major retailers - create special advantages of image search optimization for niche markets and smaller retailers.

"This is one case where smaller retailers without large content management systems can hold an advantage," said Evans. "Smaller retailers have direct control over picture descriptions, picture names and content that is directly around the pictures and on the page. Content Management Systems have a lot more constraints on content and files names and therefore it is a lot more difficult to optimize for image search," she said.

Image Optimization Tips

The panelists offered the following tips for optimizing images for search engines:

Future of image search

Image search optimizers on the panel expressed their desire to see more opportunities for image search optimizers, such as a keyword research tool specific to image search (like the Overture keyword tool) and the ability to submit image/multimedia specific feeds. "That would allow webmasters to have better control over defining what the image was in relation to content," says Evans.

"Right now, 95% of the focus is to what traffic into websites comes from "regular" search, not on images," added Evans. "Once experienced search marketers and/or web analytics analysts start to point out the higher conversion rates and growing traffic from image search, that's when the request for more information will begin to grow."

Grant Crowell is the CEO and Creative Director of Grantastic Designs, Inc., a full-service search engine marketing, web site design, and usability firm.

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