Image file names 1

[BabyJeffy]

Surprisingly(?) I was unable to find a reference that gave a specific answer to this when I was searching earlier on today. Maybe someone here has a reference they can point to...

The site I'm working on has many images. Many more are added every day by editors uploading and creating content. What would be a suitable file naming scheme for images that they upload?

Currently we're going with:

/some/path/to/image/YYYY/MM/DD/image_name.jpg

With the "image_name" replaced with a useful optimised name. Maybe something like "blue_whale.jpg" or "britney_spears.jpg" (depending on what the main content of the image is).

Subsequent images uploaded in the same day (requiring they share the same source directory) will have _N appended to the image name before the .jpg extension (so "blue_whale_2.jpg" etc). So it would be possible to have 3 images all with the same file name, but uploaded on different days (so stored in different directories).

Why do I care about this? The images need to be searchable via google image search, with the goal that people click-through to the main content based on finding an appropriate image initially. That's the expectation from the business people.

I know I get an SEO benefit from the page title, the page heading, the words "around" (in close proximity to) the image and the alt text in the image tag. I'm actively doing all this.

I'm guessing I can get a benefit from the path to the image and from the image file name as well. Does anyone have any evidence to back this up (or bust these two myths)?

Cheers,
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Blog [!]@[/!] CodeRambler

http://www.coderambler.com/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

Make sure your web page and css validates properly against the doctype you have chosen - before you attempt to debug a problem!

FAQ216-6094

 

[ChrisHirst]

the filename is of little to no value at all unless it gets linked to with the file name as anchor text (same as it is for pages)

BUT blue_whale != "blue whale". blue-whale would though.

with the goal that people click-through to the main content based on finding an appropriate image initially. That's the expectation from the business people.

Yeah Right!
I guess they don't know that > 90% of image searches are people looking to steal the images then


Chris.

Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
Woo Hoo! the cobblers kids get new shoes.
People Counting Systems

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

[Sheco]

Its not stealing... its a source image for mocking photoshop "art.

 

[BabyJeffy]

Thanks for your input (again), Chris. I wasn't aware of the distinction between underscores and dashes - it makes sense once you read a few google results. I've ensured spaces are being translated to dashes for the image file names now

We're not really in a position to do a "before" and "after" case study on changing the file names... so at this stage we can't tell the effect of renaming the image file names will have. Personally I think there will be a benefit in indexing for "gallery" pages that have exclusively images displayed on them (it's a bit of a tentative link, however).

Cheers,
Jeff

[tt]Jeff's Blog [!]@[/!] CodeRambler

http://www.coderambler.com/

http://www.coedit.co.uk/

[/tt]

Make sure your web page and css validates properly against the doctype you have chosen - before you attempt to debug a problem!

FAQ216-6094