Image Search Update Results in Less Referral Traffic


Just a few months ago, we wrote about Google Image Search's big change. This change streamlined the process of finding the pictures you want, but as we warned - also effectively cut out the site where the image originated. Instead of seeing the site in the background when viewing the image, now there is a black background with similar images lined up to the right to choose from.

A few reasons stated by Google why the source page isn't featured in the background anymore.

"This speeds up the experience for users, reduces the load on the source website's servers, and improves the accuracy of webmaster metrics such as pageviews."

This update has not yet spread to many other countries' Google Image Search, like France (as seen in the Before picture below).

What image search looked like before the update.

gisbefore.png

What image search looked like after the update.

gisafter.png

According to a recent study of 87 sites, traffic from Google Image Search has dropped an average of 63% across the board. Sites hit the hardest focused on Fashion and Entertainment.

Just look at the steep drop in traffic below, courtesy of the Define Media Group's study.

gisupdatetraffic.png

What does this mean for you as an online business owner? Diversify your means of optimization, ESPECIALLY if you rely heavily on traffic from image searches. You should also consider branching out to sites like Pinterest when it comes to marketing with images or you may want to consider taking one of our Advanced SEO training courses, as our resident expert goes over the finer points of image optimization.<...

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