Hello, I'm still new to Drupal & web design so this may seem elementary. I am trying to ensure that my image nodes show up during image search engine results, not just text/web results. Meaning that my pictures/thumbnails show up in Google when keywords are searched.

What can I do to enhance the Image Paths, etc. I noticed these patterns offered within the section. Can you tell me what the differences are and if one is better than the other? Is it better to have a .html or .jpg ending to my image nodes for robots to detect images? I'm grasping at the basic understanding since my nodes show up in text results, but not image results.

I appreciate it.

[field_url-url]
Link URL
[field_url-title]
Link title
[field_url-view]
Formatted html link

Recap of My Questions:

1. What can I do to enhance the Image Paths, etc?

2. Is it better to have a .html or .jpg ending to my image nodes for robots to detect images?

3. Can you briefly tell me or show me what the differences between these formats are and if one is better than the other for Image Paths?:

[field_url-url]
Link URL:

[field_url-title]
Link title:

[field_url-view]
Formatted html link:

(FYI: my sites I'm working on currently revising are http://www.ratrodderalley.com and http://www.hotrodderalley.com. I'm creating future sites like my http://www.activeamputees.com/home with pathauto prior to adding any content.)

Comments

Garrett Albright’s picture

Garrett Albright commented

The .jpg (and .jpeg) extension should only be used for files which are actually JPEGs. Using that extension for web pages may cause search engine robots to devalue your page, thinking you're trying something sneaky. If you're going to use an extension, use .html.

As for your third question, that looks like a CCK field, and without any information as to what sort of info the "url" field is containing, it's hard to give a recommendation which one to use (if you would even want to use that field at all). But just from the looks of things, I'd say that field_url-url wouldn't be good as it would be putting a URL inside of a URL, and field_url-view wouldn't work since it would be putting HTML inside of a URL. What most folks use when using Pathauto is some variant on the node's title -- try something like "images/[title-raw]".

Vibration’s picture

Vibration commented

Thanks for your help. I am trying /images/[title-raw] and I had tried the others prior to seeing your note. I am getting a better url.

Example:

http://ratrodderalley.com/content/1968-dodge-d100-rat-rod

http://ratrodderalley.com/content/1968-dodge-d100-rat-rod?size=thumbnail

However:

I notice in image searches that people seem to have it look like this: http://ratrodderalley.com/content/1968-dodge-d100-rat-rod.jpg (or. html)

My images are jpg so it's all good if I use it, BUT for some reason my raw titles are being stripped of their extensions.

I'm beginning to think that it may have something to do with image module &/or acidfree module. OR is their a way of keeping the extensions using pathauto.

Thanks again,

Lorraine

Garrett Albright’s picture

Garrett Albright commented

Did you try setting it to /images/[title-raw].html ? That should do it.

Again, you should use the .jpg extension for pictures themselves, not HTML files, which is what search engines will link to. What you're likely seeing is the path to the image itself, but that's not what, say, Google Image Search links to… it links to the page that the image is on.

cwgordon7’s picture

cwgordon7 commented

If you update the path syntax, you may have to rebuild the search index because the search index would contain stale data. As Garrett Albright said, it is NOT good to use a .jpg/.jpeg extension on a page which is not just an image; only the images themselves are named .jpg, so the image page in Drupal should not be named that. If you want to use an extension, you can use .html— although it might be more search engine friendly to leave out the .html. Look at the SEO group on groups.drupal.org if you're interested in the subject.

You should not try to convince robots that image nodes are images, because they're not.

greggles’s picture

greggles
he/him
Primary language English
Location Denver, Colorado, USA
commented
Status: Active » Fixed

Seems like some good discussion so I'm marking this fixed. Also, as cwgordon7 mentioned, discussion of paths and SEO in general is more on topic in the SEO group on groups.drupal.org

Vibration’s picture

Vibration commented

Thanks for the comments.

I think that was where I became confused :). I just began to notice that image nodes are not images. I'm still unsure as to exactly how or why this is. I don't think I want image nodes.

Anyway, I will read the group discussion, and I will try to add the [title-raw] to the path like suggested. It just seems that some peoples image folder is indexed and reported to search engines separate from the page itself and I'm trying to ensure it happens with my site too.

I'll let you know how it goes.

-Thanks,
Lorraine

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented
Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for two weeks with no activity.