Q: I am a Hollywood agent and we are not happy with some of the images that Google shows when you search for names of some of our clients.  Where does Google get these images and how can I request that they remove them?

A: We’ll use the search results for the actor Paul Rudd as an example.  Here is a screenshot showing the image thumbnails on Google  when you search for the phrase “paul rudd”:

In this example, the image results are sourced in a variety of sites, including wikipedia.com, exposay.com, thehunkies.com, movieeye.com, biographyworld.net and so on.  You can see where the images come from by rolling over each thumbnail and looking at the URL.

If there are offensive or problematic images in your clients’ results, here are some approaches you can take to improving them:

• Compete for these positions with your own images on your own website. Gaining a position among these thumbnails  requires that your site compete within image listings in the same way that webpages compete for web search rankings.
• Contact the owners of the site that posted the offending images, and request that the images be taken down. (This is sometimes called a “takedown notice”).  You can challenge them based on copyright violations or other applicable violations.
• Google will only remove listings in extremely limited circumstances: if another site publishes confidential information such as social security number or bank account number.  See Google’s help page on this topic.

If you decide to compete for these positions, here are some basic image ranking factors that will help your website’s images rank well:

• Images must be accessible to the search engines.  Make sure you aren’t disallowing search engines from indexing your images with the robots.txt file.
• Images filenames should contain target keywords.  In this example, a filename such as paulrudd or paul-rudd.jpg would be a good idea
• Image captions and other text on the page should contain target keywords
• The images should be placed on individual pages – one page for each image – and there must be links pointing to these pages
• A domain with a high level of authority, based on overall inbound links from high-quality websites, will have a better chance of gaining high ranks in image search .

We hope it goes without saying that getting a high rank for a celebrity name search is going to be highly competitive.  Rather than reinventing the wheel, you may want to simply work on making sure that your clients’ preferred pics are nicely distributed to as many legit webmasters as possible.  That way, the other sites will do the job for you!

When big news breaks, people flock to the search engines, and the search engines work hard to deliver timely search results and useful updates. Forward-thinking SEOs tend to take advantage of these really big news events by monitoring the search results closely, with the goal of getting a glimpse into the search algorithms. We don’t get to pick these opportunities; they just happen. And so last night, while most people were watching or surfing the news of Osama Bin Laden’s death, I chose to monitor Google Image results for the search phrase “osama bin laden dead.”

Of course, Google’s search results are personalized, so your results may differ from mine. As I suspected he would, Danny Sullivan monitored Google Suggest, and announced that it took approximately 2 hours for Google to start suggesting search phrases related to the news of the evening. Here’s what I saw at 8:54pm, approximately 20 minutes after Obama’s speech:

And here’s what the Google suggest box looks like now:

After searching for “osama bin laden dead,” one of these suggested search phrases, I was struck by the image results, which were fanciful/fictional representations of this topic, and were clearly not posted in conjunction with the evening’s big news. Here’s a rundown of what I observed.

9:11pm – No top image results are tied to current news stories:

9:29pm – 2nd page of Google image results shows some recent images. These are time-stamped by Google. (I took the liberty of censoring the profanity on the final image on the first page of results.)

9:40pm – I noted that an image from the site talkingpointsmemo.com was taking the lead, on the low first page of Google image results.

Today, it appears that a page on Digital Trends has the highest-ranking recent image related to this search, but it has not out-ranked the top images that were in place previously. I am seeing it intermittently on the first page of Universal search results, but consistently in the first page of the Google images vertical search results.

I’m no longer seeing the image from talkingpointsmemo.com on the first 5 pages of image results.

I look forward to keeping an eye on Google image results to see how this develops.

Googling ourselves. We’ve all done it – and privacy experts agree that it should be done on a regular basis. But if the results that come up on Google when you search for your own name are less-than-flattering, you may be scrambling for a solution.

These days, potential employers (and mothers-in-law) are checking Google results for your name rather than just reading your resume. Whether it’s outdated contact info, unprofessional forum postings from 10 years ago, or a photo of you in a wet g-string contest (and you’re aguy!) you may be in need of a personal Google make-over.  Here are a few tips to improve your personal presence on this important search engine:

• Set up a Google Profile. Google will sometimes display your profile picture and link in the search results for your name. Although the listing may not be prominent, it’s accompanied by a thumbnail photo, which goes a long way toward getting people to notice it! Even better, you have 100% control over your profile contents – how much does that rock? It’s very easy to set up a Google Profile. Just go to http://www.google.com/profiles and click on the big “create a profile” link.
• Regularly review Google’s ORM (online reputation management) tool, called “Me on the Web.”  Read Google’s June, 2011 Me on the Web announcement for more info.
• See something bad? Ask the owner of the page to update or remove it. Almost anything can be removed from a website – if the site owner is accessible and agreeable.  After all, most website owners want updated information just as badly as you do. If you can find contact information for the website that bears outdated or improper information about you, obtaining an update or removal may be as simple as asking for it.  Be sure that you are very specific about the page or pages that contain the problem, and clear about why you want it changed.   If removal is not an option, you might request that the site owner add text such as “This information was last updated March 1996.  ZappyCo cannot vouch for the current status of this information” or “This page is no longer maintained.”
• Crowd out the results. It’s likely that you won’t find anyone who’s willing or able to change the offending content for you. Items such as archived forums, news and media content, and postings by people that simply hate your guts are destined to stay out there indefinitely.  Your best bet will be to try to outrank them on the search engines. Strategies for outranking your competitors can – and do – fill many websites and books.  Some quick and easy ways to start are:
  • Start posting comments in blogs or forums using your full name.  Choose big, popular forums that are likely to have a good presence, and make sure that the pages are accessible without a login.  (And, before you get any big ideas, make sure they’re relevant comments, or else when you Google yourself you’ll be embarrassed by your own spam messages.)
  • If you have a business or personal website, you can make your name one of your top target keywords and proceed with an SEO plan like the one described in our book, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day.
  • If you have the opportunity to build your own web page within the website of your school, employer, or any organization of which you are a member (many schools offer this to their students and staff), be sure to do so. A nicely written bio page would be a welcome result on a Google search for your name!
  • If you don’t have a website or bio page, build one on any of the zillions of free website services out there (you can experiment with Google’s own here: [Google Link]) and make a page that’s all about you! (Also see the “pay your way to the top” bullet below – Naymz offers a free profile page.)
  • Get active on Linkedin or another business networking site.
• Use your middle name. Often, problems with Googling yourself arise because there are other people sharing the same first and last name.  For example, there are two authors on Amazon.com named Jennifer Grappone! If you are plagued by this type of problem, you might wish to incorporate your middle name into business correspondence, add it to your personal signature on emails, use it in forum and blog postings, and be sure that it is included on any web content about you.  In the long run, this will help to distinguish you from all of those online doppelgangers.
• …or no name at all. Some content stays on the internet for a surprisingly long time. Use your full name as described in the previous bullet when you’re making professional postings, but consider using a “pen name” for dating profiles or other material that you may not want to show up in 10 years when a potential employer is Googling you. And go anonymous for some of those those rants that you can’t resist!
• If all else fails, consider paying your way to the top. There’s even a company designed specifically to help you with this: Naymz, at https://www.naymz.com. (special thanks to Andy Beal for this suggestion from his blog). The basic service allows you to create a free personal profile page on their domain. The premium service will sponsor ads listing your profile page in Google, MSN, and Yahoo! (Be warned, as reader Darin Newberry points out: “Naymz web site is for the personal use of individual members only and may not be used in connection with any commercial endeavors.”)
• If pictures are poisoning your reputation, read more about image search at our post: How To Improve Image Ranks

Follow these steps to improve your Google self-esteem.  It’s a lot easier than changing your name!

Do you have extraordinary images or videos? Would you benefit from a wider audience? Use these links to help you assess the status of your images and upload your videos.

Please note: you can find revised and expanded information about video on our Video Search Engine Optimization page.

Google

• Search Google images here: http://images.google.com
• Search Google videos here: http://video.google.com
• To upload your videos, go to http://www.youtube.com
• The Google Video Help Center is here: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/

Google allows you to include a title and description for your videos, so take advantage of this by writing something compelling and keyword-rich!

Yahoo

• Search Yahoo! images here: http://search.yahoo.com/images
• Search Yahoo! videos here: http://video.search.yahoo.com/
• To upload your video (it’s free) do so here: http://video.yahoo.com/video/upload

You’ll need a Yahoo! account and you’ll also need to create a video-specific profile for yourself before you can upload a video. You can also include a transcript of your video and tags to describe it – remember to include your well-researched keywords! There is a file limit of 100 MB for uploaded files.

Bing

• Search Bing images here: http://www.bing.com/images
• Search Bing videos here: http://www.bing.com/videos/browse

Ask

• Search images on Ask here: http://www.ask.com/?tool=img