Google images - keywords?

Is there any way to check what keywords are being used to find your site on Google Images? I have a couple of sites that are getting really high hits from it ... but have no idea which pic or what search term is being used.

 

I use statcounter as one of my analytics program and it shows searches that come in from google images

 

I also use the same. But where to get the details the keywords detail

 

I don't get the keywords for image searches in statcounter - I DO get this from
w1.whatcounter.com

 

You can also search through you monthly raw log files for images.google.com and just look at the urls. You can actually cut and paste those urls into the address bar of your browser and pull up the same page that the searcher saw, including what they typed into the search box, if you don't know how to parse it out.

How big is your raw log file?

-Michael

 

Not huge, I might give that a go.

Annoying that Analytics or AWStats don't show it with the other referrers though.

Thanks!

 

Usually, you can get the basic idea from Awstats....try the top keywords in your awstats, manually in google images, and if u show up, u found it . It can get difficult if u have a BIG site ..

 

I think they lump them all in as referrers from Google. What do you expect though, they're free software.

-Michael

 

Google Analytics. I get more traffic from Google Images than Google itself ( ie the text search ). Analytics doesn't really break the two apart, although you can glean some useful info still.

An example would be that my North Vancouver photo doesn't get any traffic from Google's text search, but plenty from Google Images. So I know all the keywords to that page come from image search.

If the page got 50/50 from text and image search, I'd either split the difference, or if it's important, test the keywords in both versions of the engine and see where you land.

Or, if you have awstats, you can grab the raw server logs, and pull them into Access or Excel, and get exact numbers. This is definitely more work, but it's also a lot more accurate ... consider Analytics only reports java-enabled browsers, and there are plug ins that let you disable it, along with adverts.

 

While we're on this subject, is there a way to prevent Google image search from showing results from a site? I ask because for the last two weeks, I too have been getting heavily hit for one particular picture. It's getting so much traffic it's completely swamping the results so I can't see the true traffic.

I have no idea what the reason is for the sudden traffic for this pic as it's been on my site, and indexed on google images, for six months but is suddenly getting around 25 hits an hour.

 

search by referring domain, the cross preform images.google.com to the entrance point ...google analytics..hitbox etc

 

Are you sure it's coming from Google images? Did you rankings change?

You can block your images directory in robots.txt if you need to, I'm pretty sure. I'd make sure it wasn't because some site that is now ranking higher than you isn't hotlinking first though.

-Michael

 

I'm positive about those hits coming from Google Image search, Michael. I check the referers in my web stats and if my ranking for whatever keywords are being used for it has increased, then it's entirely accidental and certainly not a keyword(s) I've been working for.

Thanks for the tip about the robots.txt. I'll look into that.

 

I know you know they're coming from Google Image search... what I mean is, if someone is hotlinking your images, and their site comes up in Google Images, then I think that it still shows Goggle Images as the referrer, because of the way they frame in the pages displaying the image.

Like, in this case. This search shows an image from this site:

http://www.k-rad.hk/wp-content/Scarlett_Johansson1.jpg

But the actual page coming up is someone linking to that image:

http://degenerateelite.blogspot.com/2007/03/christy-savaging-degeneration-text.html

So, if site A were to look at their logs, they would (I'm pretty sure, anyways) see Google Images as the referrer, not Site B, even though it is due to Site B's rankings.

I might be wrong though. You can definitely find out by cutting and pasting the whole referring URL into the browser.

-Michael

 

Ahh right. I see what you mean now. Since you said that I've just checked 15or 20 of them and none of them are hotlinked so it's definately something to do with my site that's changed.