Metadata, Images & robots.txt

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Kev261266
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Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by Kev261266 » Thu Jul 07, 2011 5:56 am

Hiya,

On a recent site installation I added metadata to all images on the site. Using XMP (as part of adobe bridge) I was able to add copyright info & also descriptions & keywords, which I assume will help the overall SEO of the site.

On inspection of the robots.txt file, I notice that images are disallowed by default. Is there a good reason for this? and if not, is it simply a case of removing the one single line from the txt file, which will then give access to images by the search spiders?

I can understand why modules, templates etc. have a disallow status, but surely if the image data is set up properly, then images data crawls should be okay.

Any thoughts on this one?

Thanks in advance.
Cheers.

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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by ollieo » Thu Jul 07, 2011 10:57 am

Hey Kev,

I have done this for several clients that requested this and they are happy with the result. Just remove the disallow of change it to allow both will work.

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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by Kev261266 » Fri Jul 08, 2011 5:32 am

Cheers Ollie,

I thought it should work, the way I see it, it's like adding mini pages, or articles in joomla speak. So can only help the whole seo situation.

Thanks again.
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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by Ydeveloper » Fri Jul 08, 2011 8:16 am

I do not think that search engine crawlers are tracking the images during crawling. The content in the form of text can only be crawled by search engine.

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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by Kev261266 » Fri Jul 08, 2011 10:13 am

Ydevelopor, this is because the robots.txt file disallows it as a default. The discussion on this thread is about editing the default so the search engines do crawl it. Read my first post for clarification.
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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by brian » Fri Jul 08, 2011 10:29 am

I always edit the robots.txt to allow images and have had great results from that especially if the image filename is descriptive and not generic
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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by Kev261266 » Fri Jul 08, 2011 12:50 pm

Hi Brian, that's where I'm coming from. Create a descriptive filename, then add description, keywords, copyright etc. using xmp in adobe bridge. Would you then recommend the same as ollie? and either remove the line totally or change it to allow in robots.txt?

I reckon that image links will then appear in google images, but that's not a bad thing either.
Cheers.

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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by brian » Fri Jul 08, 2011 1:16 pm

Removing the line or setting it to allow have the same effect
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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by Kev261266 » Fri Jul 08, 2011 1:24 pm

Splendid.
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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by John_45 » Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:25 pm

Edited messege

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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by creativesights » Wed Feb 06, 2013 8:06 pm

I guess I don't understand why that line is in the robot.txt.

I can edit it quickly and remove that line, but for my more savvy clients who update the site on their own, the robots.txt is overwritten and the "disallow images" text is right back in.

It's unlikely they're going to notice, but eventually they'll notice that none of the images on their site is being indexed by the search engines....
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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by marshjo » Tue Feb 12, 2013 1:31 pm

First of all you should remove images folder from robots.txt file.

Secondly, for images to be get searched on search engines many factors are used to calculate the image rankings. Use descriptive alt tag, like alt="This image is about the sun" , use possible keywords for the image name like sun-set.jpg, use heading tag h1, h2 or h3 to provide heading for the image and surround the image with content that contain keywords but not forcibly.

Using all these or some of these will help your images to get ranked in image search engines.
Last edited by marshjo on Thu Feb 14, 2013 8:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by creativesights » Tue Feb 12, 2013 3:19 pm

The question is why is it there in the first place.
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Re: Metadata, Images & robots.txt

Post by saiful07 » Wed Feb 13, 2013 2:15 am

Hi,
Thanks for your helpful post.


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