Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Product Images with organic results in SERP
-
Hey Mozzers,
I've noticed that several of our product page results in Google have the product image associated with them. Today is the first day I've seen this. Does anyone know anything about these? Has Google put anything out about this? Here's a couple examples:
What's interesting is that they don't show for me when I use Chrome's Incognito mode.
Any insights much appreciated!
Will
-
Odd - the exact page is http://www.evo.com/alpine-ski-boots/full-tilt-drop-kick.aspx. But there is no Schema markup and the OpenGraph image is of the yellow boot and so are the product images…
The image they appear to be showing is from the “Others Liked These Similar Items” from the lower right nav…
Which is not Schema or OG coded…
-
Since the SERP shows product information such as price and the fact that it is "in stock," I assume that you are using scheme markup? (Which, of course, you should.) I don't know if there is (and/or if you're using) product-image scheme markup, but that would be why if it appears. If there is no product-image scheme markup, then Google still thinks that it is valuable to the user to show the image on the page in the SERP.
As far as the image appearing only sometimes (when you're NOT using Icognito mode): Google decides what to include in each SERP every time that the search results are processed and your website is included. And that decision may involve the exact search query, the search history of the user, the location and device of the user, and many other factors. Google may even decide to use text for the meta description other than what the website owner has specified.
So, what appears is always up to Google. Not all schema markup (or anything else on the page) will appear every time. Since Google seems to understand that you "own" the website and are specifically interested in it, perhaps Google wants to show you more of the elements on the specific page. In contrast, Google may think a random person searching for that keyword (as in you under Incognito search) who is "less associated" with your specific website may want to view more general results overall and see fewer specific details about one particular website.
I hope this makes sense. It all comes down to the fact that Google shows different information to each searcher based on what it knows about that searcher. It will be different for each person every time.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Product Schema Markup for All Products
Hi Team, Google search console used to allow you to use their structured data markup helperhttps://www.google.com/webmasters/markup-helper/u/0/ to markup multiple product pages at once that were similar. I do not see this feature anymore with the new search console. Does anyone have a recommendation for marking up multiple product pages without having to have schema markup firing in GTM for each product page?
Technical SEO | | agrier0 -
Google serp pagination issue
We are a local real estate company and have landing pages for different communities and cities around our area that display the most recent listings. For example: www.mysite.com/wa/tumwater is our landing page for the city of Tumwater homes for sale. Google has indexed most of our landing pages, but for whatever reason they are displaying either page 2, 3, 4 etc... instead of page 1. Our Roy, WA landing page is another example. www.mysite.com/wa/roy has recently been showing up on page 1 of Google for "Roy WA homes for sale", but now we are much further down and www.mysite.com/wa/roy?start=80 (page 5) is the only page in the serps. (coincidentally we no longer have 5 pages worth of listings for this city, so this link now redirects to www.mysite.com/wa/roy.) We haven't made any major recent changes to the site. Any help would be much appreciated! *You can see what my site is in the attached image... I just don't want this post to show up when someone google's the actual name of the business 🙂 nTTrSMx.jpg C4mhfgh.jpg
Technical SEO | | summithomes0 -
Indexing product attributes in sitemap
Hey Mozzers! I'm battling a few questions about the sitemap for my ecommerce store. Could you help me out? Is it necessary to include your product attributes in the sitemap? I'm not sure why it would matter to have a sitemap that lists everything in the color cherry. Also, if the attributes were included in the sitemap, would that count as duplicate content for the same products to show up in multiple attributes? Is there any benefit to submitting the sitemaps individually? For example, submitting /product-sitemap.xml, /product_brand-sitemap.xml versus just /sitemap.xml? Any other best practices for managing my ecommerce sitemap, or great resources, would be very helpful. Thank you! a1vUz
Technical SEO | | localwork0 -
Image Search
Hello Community, I have been reading and researching about image search and trying to find patterns within the results but unfortunately I could not get to a conclusion on 2 matters. Hopefully this community would have the answers I am searching for. 1) Watermarked Images (To remove or not to remove watermark from photos) I see a lot of confusion on this subject and am pretty much confused myself. Although it might be true that watermarked photos do not cause a punishment, it sure does not seem to help. At least in my industry and on a bunch of different random queries I have made, watermarked images are hard to come by on Google's images results. Usually the first results do not have any watermarks. I have read online that Google takes into account user behavior and most users prefer images with no watermark. But again, it is something "I have read online" so I don't have any proof. I would love to have further clarification and, if possible, a definite guide on how to improve my image results. 2) Multiple nested folders (Folder depth) Due to speed concerns our tech guys are using 1 image per folder and created a convoluted folder structure where the photos are actually 9 levels deep. Most of our competition and many small Wordpress blogs outrank us on Google images and on ALL INSTANCES I have checked, their photos are 3, 4 or 5 levels deep. Never inside 9 nested folders.
Technical SEO | | Koki.Mourao
So... A) Should I consider removing the watermark - which is not that intrusive but is visible?
B) Should I try to simplify the folder structure for my photos? Thank you0 -
SERP Title shows up-with-dashes
Occasionally I see the our 'listings' on Google where the Title line shows up with dashes... like sony-professional-hard-drive - TapeandMedia.com It appears to be the URL shortened and rehashed. This example was after I searched for "Sony PSZ-HA1T" without the quotes. The title for this page is <title></span><span class="html-tag">Sony 1TB Professional Portable External Hard Disk Drive (PSZ-HA1T)</span><span class="html-tag"></title> and the url is http://www.tapeandmedia.com/sony-1tb-professional-portable-hard-drive.asp Link to image: http://i.imgur.com/FmvAn6c.jpg Other searches (like "Sony 1tb PSZ-HA1T") yield normal looking SERP Titles Does anyone know why this happens and what I can do to avoid this? FmvAn6c.jpg
Technical SEO | | BWallacejr0 -
How to change the woocommerce product page permalink
Sorry Posting it again. How I can change the product URL structure. Please let me know how to fix woocommerce permalink in wordpress. My current URL is http://www.ayurjeewan.com/product/divya-ashmarihar-kwath and I want to like (only post name) http://www.ayurjeewan.com/divya-ashmarihar-kwath Attached is the screenshot of option available. qa2hZMP.jpg
Technical SEO | | JordanBrown0 -
How do I handle duplicate content of the same product in Multiple product categories?
I am building a BigCommerce store for selling framed art. Many of the pieces of art will fall in more than one product category. Let's say I have a framed print of a photograph of a western landscape. This piece of art would fit into these categories; "western", "landscape", and "photography". I would have three pages with duplicate content for just this one framed print. Will google give me less page rank due to this? Can all the link juice be given to just one of the three categories by use of rel=canonical? If so, does anyone know how to do this for a bigcommerce site? I would appreciate any feedback. Thanks, Kelly
Technical SEO | | Kelly_S0 -
ECommerce: Best Practice for expired product pages
I'm optimizing a pet supplies site (http://www.qualipet.ch/) and have a question about the best practice for expired product pages. We have thousands of products and hundreds of our offers just exist for a few months. Currently, when a product is no longer available, the site just returns a 404. Now I'm wondering what a better solution could be: 1. When a product disappears, a 301 redirect is established to the category page it in (i.e. leash would redirect to dog accessories). 2. After a product disappers, a customized 404 page appears, listing similar products (but the server returns a 404) I prefer solution 1, but am afraid that having hundreds of new redirects each month might look strange. But then again, returning lots of 404s to search engines is also not the best option. Do you know the best practice for large ecommerce sites where they have hundreds or even thousands of products that appear/disappear on a frequent basis? What should be done with those obsolete URLs?
Technical SEO | | zeepartner1