Optimize Web Pages for Google Image Search

Google Webmaster Central blog points to an interesting video about improving your ranking in Google Image Search.

Here are some insights:

* it's not important to get the top rankings, users often click on the next pages of results to find appropriate images. There are many "subjective" queries and users tend to explore instead of trying to find the perfect result.

* use images that are large enough.

* use high-quality images.

* include descriptive text next to the images.

* place the images so that it's not necessary to scroll too much in order to find them.

* Google Image Search clusters (almost) identical images and usually only one of them is displayed. If more than one page embeds the image, Google tries to find the most relevant page for that query.

* there are many new use cases for Image Search: inspiration, visual dictionary for foreign languages, shopping, research.

Who Links to Non-Existing Pages from Your Site?

Google Webmaster Tools is a valuable source of information if you have a website: Google lists crawl errors, popular searches that lead to your site, backlinks and SEO tips. Until now, Google listed the URLs from your site that returned the 404 (page not found) error, without mentioning how GoogleBot found those addresses. This has been fixed and you can find the list of pages that link to broken URLs from your site in the "Linked From" column of the "Diagnostics > Web crawl > Not found" report.


"If we report crawl errors for your website, you can use crawl error sources to quickly determine if the cause is from your site or someone else's. You'll have the information you need to contact them to get it fixed, and if needed, you can still put in place redirects on your own site to the appropriate URL," suggests Google Webmaster Central blog.

Google Widget for Custom 404 Error Pages

Google Toolbar 5 for IE (and soon for Firefox) has a useful feature that adds custom 404 error pages. If a site doesn't customize the error page and you click on a broken link or mistype the web address, Google Toolbar shows a list of suggestions: the site's homepage and some searches that could help you locate the right page.


Google implemented a similar error page for google.com and now you can add it to your own site. If you have access to the web server and you can customize the 404 error page, Google provides a widget that enhances the page. "The 404 widget is a quick and easy way to embed a search box on your custom 404 page and provide users with useful information designed to help them find the information they need. Where we can, we'll also suggest other ways for the user to find the information they need, thus increasing the likelihood that they'll continue to explore your site," explains Google.

The widget can be found in Google Webmaster Central, by selecting a site from the dashboard and clicking on Tools > Enhance 404 pages. Unfortunately, it requires JavaScript, so a small number of visitors will not see it.


Google has some recommendations for creating useful error pages: informing visitors that the page could not be found, recommending popular pages from the site, using a consistent design and preventing 404 pages from being indexed by search engines.

The Webmaster Central Blog mentions that this feature is experimental and that not all the sites show great suggestions.