Worse customer service on WordPress

Hey David – Thanks for the feedback.

You’ve been using the plugin for like 4 years, have had some other issues resolved by us, and have otherwise suggested that it’s a good plugin.

While I can agree looking at your support thread that we really haven’t solved your image indexing issue, given how long you’ve used the plugin, given it has done many things well for you, and given all the the plugin does in general, do you really think a lack of image indexing for you drops the rating from 5 stars to 1 star? Any chance I can ask you to bump this up a bit inline with your overall experience?

I should add (both for David and others reading this) that NextGEN images can be and are often indexed in search. We’re doing anything to specifically inhibit image indexing.

The one big thing that we know we can do to help with image indexing is integration with SEO plugins to ensure inclusion of NextGEN images on sitemaps. We released a Yoast integration for this a year or two ago. But a change by Yoast last year affected our integration.

Our next release (we’ve been working on it for about a month, and we’re wrapping up a week of testing today) actually resolves the outstanding issues with Yoast and ensures NextGEN images are fully included in Yoast sitemaps.

David, I’m not sure if you use Yoast, but obviously this could help quite a bit with your indexing issue.

To sum up: you’ve had an otherwise good experience; image indexing is just one of 100 factors to consider for rating a gallery plugin; we’re not doing anything bad to limit indexing; and we’ve done work to improve indexing in the past, and in our latest sprint.

I’m hoping that, all together, that’s enough to bump that rating a bit. If you do continue to use NGG, I’d also be interested to know if the improve Yoast integration helps at all.

Thanks.
(Erick – CEO)

Hey David – just another quick follow up… It seems from a quick search that your NextGEN images are indexed?

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:https://www.divinginzanzibar.com/&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiA6rzii_DSAhUU8WMKHUkNARQQ_AUIBigB&biw=1442&bih=751#imgrc=JaQxAGU4kAPgnM:

• This reply was modified 8 years ago by Erick Danzer.

Just a quick follow up @davidbega – given the various points above, and the fact that your images are actually indexed, any way I can convince you to bump the rating here a bit? Thanks! (Erick)

Hi Erick.
Thanks for your time and explanations.
I do use Yoast and would have loved to see that release that solve the Yoast sitemap issue. But, my membership is canceled. I moved to Envira Pro Gallery.
If support team on NextGEN would have spent even half of the time that you did on the above reply, I would have probably stayed with nextGEN and not write that review.

Your plugin is great but,
1. You can not have a good plugin without a good caring support behind it.
2. Images exposure on search engine is very important if you wish to get traffic to your website.
The gallery images indexed shown on the link that you sent me above are newly indexed. Probably as a result of using a different plugin.

@davidbega – Thanks for the reply. Hope your new solution works, and I honestly wish you the best. Couple quick notes on your points:

1) I’d agree with you on support. And I’d encourage you to try flipping through the first 5-10 pages of reviews for NGG here. Probably one of the most common points made is that support quality for NGG is great. We place quite a bit of emphasis on it. Obviously, that wasn’t your experience, and that’s something I’ll factor in as a data point.

2) I’d agree with you again. But the whole point I was making was that a) NextGEN images DO get indexed, b) that beyond normal indexing, we’ve had ongoing work with Yoast for integration over multiple releases, c) and that even in your case, I’m quite sure NextGEN did index your own images. At the time I checked that page, that page was still running a NextGEN Gallery. And you switched in the last couple days – even under ideal circumstances, new images via a new gallery wouldn’t have been completely indexed yet.

In any case, obviously there was a break down in expectations and experience for you. And that’s what reviews are for. Thanks for leaving some feedback, and good luck with your galleries!

Erick