Just How Relevant Are The Google Images Search Results? We’ll Show You…

Due to the large amount of link building and article writing we do at 9xb, it’s no surprise that the marketing team will end up appearing across the web. That’s all very well, but when we start showing up for some rather obscure search terms in Google Images, then we can’t help but wish we had used profile photos of a ‘cat’ or a ‘dog’ instead to prevent our mugshots showing up for things that we wouldn’t necessarily choose.

Leo joined us back in February and recently we noticed that his mugshot is showing up in Google Images for the term ‘plastic wall panelling’. We know that Leo looks nothing like a plastic wall panel, but you have to admire Google’s relevancy algorithm. Not only have they identified that Leo writes about ‘plastic wall panelling’ a lot and multiple article directories have his profile and mugshot on display, they also deem his photo valuable enough to be quite high up in Google Images results.

Google Images Search Results

You could of course look at this in two ways. Firstly, its positive that Leo’s article writing and profiles are getting noticed (hence the mugshot presence in Images) but does Google really think that by displaying a picture of Leo for the search term ‘plastic wall panelling’  that this is what people want to see?

This isn’t the first time it has happened either. My photo seemingly shows up for ‘cat health care’ which is interesting. I used to write quite a few articles around this subject, but since Jess joined the team she has taken on the role of ‘cat health care’ expert. Her photo is nowhere to be seen in image results for ‘cat health care’ but mine is still there, despite not writing articles on this subject for at least 6 months. Is there a time delay with Google Images and the search results they display? Actually there is – and a lot of people seem quite aware of this already. In most cases it can take 2-4 weeks for images to be cached for search results.

Let’s not forget that Google Images is a great way to drive traffic to your site. A blog post I wrote a few months back for a client received 1,286 click-throughs in a week, and 91% of the traffic came through from Images. If you add keyword optimised alt-tags on all your website images, you will increase your traffic considerably, particularly if your image is nestled in the top 10 results, just like the SERPs when you’re optimising your organic listings.

Still, people underestimate the power of Google Images. My advice? Make sure the filenames of your images are relevant and you include alt-tags on all of them. Then, chances are, you could end up with a very powerful presence in Google Images, bolstering your organic SEO campaign nicely.