Google doesn't crawl my images product

[mjandia]

Hello,

I have a problem with google. it show in webmaster tools the following message :

URL blocked by robots.txt files.
example :http://www.lacaverneauxmerveilles.com/images/stories/virtuemart/product/006celestine2.jpg

I use jcrawler to create the sitemap

Find the robots.txt attachment

Thanks for youor help

[attachment cleanup by admin]

[Alan_Smith]

http://www.lacaverneauxmerveilles.com/robots.txt is your robots.txt file and here given file name or directory has not been blocked.

Do one thing, create a sitemap for images and submit it to Google so crawler can find it as fast as possible.

[mjandia]

Thanks. How to do that, please ?

[coppo82]

i have the same problem , how did you solve it ?

[Peter Pillen]

open the robot.txt in your site root folder

delete the line that says : Disallow: /images/

This line tells search bots not to crawl this folder with your images. But I would recommend that you set new rules for the bots so they only crawl the folder with virtuemart images. So you need to disallow the folders that you don't wanna have crawled

for example

Disallow: /images/slideshows/
Disallow: /images/banners/
Disallow: /images/sampledata/

[coppo82]

this is my robots.txt and i already delete the line /images
but the problem still  :-(

what it sound very strange is that over 1500 are 1450 are blocked .....  94 % of image are blocked from robots.txt  and what about the other 6 % ?  i don't understand where the problem could be .

User-agent: *
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /cli/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /logs/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/

[Peter Pillen]

personally, I don't see any advantage why Google should be allowed to index your images. I prefer that Google indexes the pages wherein the images are shown, instead of only the images without further text.

Just remember that Google is not going to report this problem immediatly as solved because you changed robot.txt a halfour ago. Sometimes it takes a month before the google crawler revisits your pages. Only then will Google say.... "Owwww...  coppo gave me an new folder to crawl... yummie" and then the crawler will analyse the new folder and add it to your indexed pages.

But again... maybe it's better to let Google only crawl your pages wherein the images reside.

[coppo82]

ok i rewrite a new robots.txt and then i will wait  :-(   

thanks a lot

User-agent: *
Disallow: /administrator/
Disallow: /cache/
Disallow: /cli/
Disallow: /components/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /installation/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /libraries/
Disallow: /logs/
Disallow: /media/
Disallow: /modules/
Disallow: /plugins/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /images/banners/
Disallow: /images/sampledata/
Disallow: /images/jsn_is_thumbs/

[lindapowers]

Hi, Im having the exact same problem.

I deleted the:

Disallow: /images/

Like 2 weeks ago, maybe google still has not changed it.

The advantage IMO Peter is that you will get more visits so your pagerank could be benefit from it, the disadvantage is that most of those visits would just be to download or copy your images.

Regards

[Peter Pillen]

In my case, I would doubt that it would generate more traffic. If the images folder gets crawled, only the file names serve as keyword. I use sku numbers for my pictures so unless someone types a random number, I won't get traffic.

But I have noticed that Google has started to index my images from the category view with the image title and alt description as keywords. But the productdetailview is excluded with robot.txt which gives me a setback Having the detailview crawled causes massive duplicate metatag warnings.

[lindapowers]

In my case, I would doubt that it would generate more traffic. If the images folder gets crawled, only the file names serve as keyword. I use sku numbers for my pictures so unless someone types a random number, I won't get traffic.

But I have noticed that Google has started to index my images from the category view with the image title and alt description as keywords. But the productdetailview is excluded with robot.txt which gives me a setback Having the detailview crawled causes massive duplicate metatag warnings.

Hi, im a bit confused here. Where you set the alt tag for the images? At the media manager If I click in an image I see "unique title shown" I guess that is the title tag and subtitle shown, is that the alt tag?

[Peter Pillen]

At the media manager If I click in an image I see "unique title shown" I guess that is the title tag and subtitle shown, is that the alt tag?

correct ... the unique filename is the frontend title tag for the image and the image alt text is the frontend alt property for the image

But I cheated a little bit 

I adjusted my template overrides in such way that the image title is swapped with the name of the product and the alt img description is switched with the product short description.

Code Select Expand

<?php
$p2img_raw=$product->images[0]->displayMediaThumb('class="browseProductImage" border="0" title="'.$product->product_name.'" ',true,'class="modal"');
   //search the alt property in the img tag and make it a variable
   preg_match_all('/alt="([^`]*?)"/', $p2img_raw, $p2alt);
   
  //forgot what this part does ... haha
   $p2alt_old = strip_tags($p2alt[1][0]);
  
   //replace the old part with the product short description
   $p2img_new=str_replace('alt="'.$p2alt_old.'"','alt="'.$product->product_s_desc.'"', $p2img_raw);

  //now spit out the reworked image tag
   echo $p2img_new;

?>

this generates something like this (see below) without having to manually write a comment in the admin backend (just typed something here below  ).

<img border="0" title="Snickers power bar" class="browseProductImage" alt="Caramel chocolate bar with nuts" src="/images/stories/virtuemart/product/resized/25642225.jpg">

the only thing you need to look out for, is to keep the short description within the advised limits for alt tag use. But it saves me time and google image browsing uses the adjustment i've made. But don't do this in your productdetails page, otherwise all your images will have the same name and alt text. But this gives good results for the category views.

[lindapowers]

At the media manager If I click in an image I see "unique title shown" I guess that is the title tag and subtitle shown, is that the alt tag?

correct ... the unique filename is the frontend title tag for the image and the image alt text is the frontend alt property for the image

But I cheated a little bit 

I adjusted my template overrides in such way that the image title is swapped with the name of the product and the alt img description is switched with the product short description.

Code Select Expand

<?php
$p2img_raw=$product->images[0]->displayMediaThumb('class="browseProductImage" border="0" title="'.$product->product_name.'" ',true,'class="modal"');
   //search the alt property in the img tag and make it a variable
   preg_match_all('/alt="([^`]*?)"/', $p2img_raw, $p2alt);
   
  //forgot what this part does ... haha
   $p2alt_old = strip_tags($p2alt[1][0]);
  
   //replace the old part with the product short description
   $p2img_new=str_replace('alt="'.$p2alt_old.'"','alt="'.$product->product_s_desc.'"', $p2img_raw);

  //now spit out the reworked image tag
   echo $p2img_new;

?>

this generates something like this (see below) without having to manually write a comment in the admin backend (just typed something here below  ).

<img border="0" title="Snickers power bar" class="browseProductImage" alt="Caramel chocolate bar with nuts" src="/images/stories/virtuemart/product/resized/25642225.jpg">

the only thing you need to look out for, is to keep the short description within the advised limits for alt tag use. But it saves me time and google image browsing uses the adjustment i've made. But don't do this in your productdetails page, otherwise all your images will have the same name and alt text. But this gives good results for the category views.

Thanks.

Yes is a good idea what you have done there, but not for us as our short descriptions are not really that short.

Regards