Jetpack Photon and Google Index

Do you know if it takes longer for Google to index images powered by Photon?

Images served by Photon won’t be indexed by Google. Google will only index the canonical image, as Photon lets Google know what the original image is. Here is an example:

curl -I https://i0.wp.com/ostseemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/OSTSEE_Doneiko-2.jpg
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Thu, 02 Jul 2015 16:41:12 GMT
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Content-Length: 484925
Connection: keep-alive
Last-Modified: Thu, 02 Jul 2015 16:41:12 GMT
Expires: Sun, 02 Jul 2017 04:41:12 GMT
Cache-Control: public, max-age=63115200
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Link: <https://ostseemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/OSTSEE_Doneiko-2.jpg>; rel="canonical"
Vary: Accept
X-Bytes-Saved: 31204
X-nc: MISS dca 58
X-nc: MISS fra 20

As you can see, Photon adds a canonical link to the response you get when looking for the image. Google sees that canonical link and can follow it to index the image.

Unfortunately, that’s about all the control you or we can have over the images indexed by Google.

I assume that your logo will indeed be indexed faster as it can be found on all pages. The images you’ve inserted in your posts, however, can only be found in one post, and in the sitemap. That probably explains the difference.
You may be able to find out more by looking at your site in Google’ Webmaster Tools:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

I hope this helps.

Jeremy, hi!
Thank you for the answer. I meant the canonical image, of course ??

The thing is that 3 months later I still have only 20 images indexed out of 251. Something is not working properly…

It might be worth using a plugin like Yoast SEO to create a sitemap listing all your images, if you want them to be indexed faster.

I hope this helps.

Hello,

I use Yoast SEO for my website. Here is the link to the sitemaps, for example:
https://ostseemag.com/sitemap_index.xml

Here is the link to portfolio sitemap with all the images:
https://ostseemag.com/jetpack-portfolio-sitemap.xml

It doesn’t help, unfortunately.

I will try another plugin for sitemaps, who knows, maybe it helps

I believe Yoast SEO includes an option to create image sitemaps as well, in addition to posts, pages, and custom Post Types sitemaps. You should find that option under SEO > XML Sitemaps in your dashboard.

Hi Jeremy!

I’m using Yoast SEO with sitemap feature On (and submitted to Google) and Photon since May/June. So far I have 245 images submitted and only 14 are indexed.

Another website, which is live for 3 months and doesn’t have Photon activated has 23 Submitted and 22 Indexed.

The thing is that I really like how Photon speed up the site where images are the main content, so I don’t really want to turn it off.

Although you’re using Yoast SEO and its sitemaps at the moment, you didn’t include any image sitemap. Try going to SEO > XML Sitemaps, and make sure “Media” isn’t ticked there, to make sure Google knows about each one of your images.

With time, that should help.

Sorry, I don’t understand what do you mean by “you didn’t include any image sitemap”…

For example, I have submitted this sitemap to Google, that has all the projects and images:
https://ostseemag.com/jetpack-portfolio-sitemap.xml

Isn’t this ‘Media (attachment)’ a page that WP creates for each uploaded image?
For example, this is a page like this: https://ostseemag.com/?attachment_id=600
I don’t think I really want to index them. And Yoast says it’s a good idea to exclude these pages from the sitemap:https://kb.yoast.com/article/131-images-in-the-xml-sitemap

Isn’t this ‘Media (attachment)’ a page that WP creates for each uploaded image?

That’s correct. That’s also a nice way to let Google know of all the images on your site. I believe that could help with your indexing problems.

Ok, thanks
I will try that.