We open up Pandora’s box for Shopify merchants I launched in December 2017. To date we have submitted over 500k images to Google Search on behalf of our customers—with those customers seeing an average of . I started with a hypothesis about helping merchants reliably improve their Google image indexing. This hypothesis came about due to some limitations with the Shopify platform along with the amount of effort needed to manage large image sitemaps (or those greater than 2,000 images and 30,000 lines of XML — some of our customers’ image sitemaps contain more than 500k lines of XML). It seems that my hypothesis is on the way to being strongly validated. Image Sitemap for Shopify 648% increase in indexed images massive By default, Shopify only includes a single image per product in their standard image sitemap. The app submits every single image to Google and includes important product metadata as well. We also resubmit all data to Google on every catalog change. Google seems to like what we’re doing, so I wanted to share our findings so far. Image Sitemap for Shopify Highlights Across our customers, we are seeing an average of in image indexing from the day our app is installed. 648% improvement Our largest customer, , has over in their catalog — in their first two weeks with the app they saw a in indexed images in Google. Contemporary Furniture Warehouse 80k images 252% increase went from images in Google in just three weeks. Jessica’s shop has been on Shopify for over three years! Jessica Rose 0% indexed to 76% indexed Our best performing customer, , is reliably averaging . Parks Project 90%+ images indexed We helped expose a massive with their EU store. Obey Clothing Googlebot error saw a in indexed images in 10 days. Baa Baa 2000% increase saw a in indexed images in one month. I Do Forever 320% increase Interesting Correlations Apart from the obvious task of submitting every product image to Google, regardless of catalog size—there seem to be some interesting findings when looking at the following measures: File Name Similarity Site Traffic Image Uniqueness & Duplicate Content 1. File Name Similarity File name similarity seems to be a substantial predictor of image indexing in Google. Google likes to see image file names that are very similar to both the product title and the product handle (or url pathname) . A correlation above 0.40 seems to be ideal. We calculate this correlation using Dice’s Coefficient. foo-bar-pocket-tshirt-striped-red-front.jpg Foo Bar Pocket T-Shirt — Striped /products/foo-bar-pocket-tshirt-striped-red For example: File name: Product title: Product handle: Our customers whose average correlation is are indexing in Google than those whose correlation is below 0.40. above 0.40 40% more images 2. Site Traffic Site traffic also seems to be a substantial predictor of image indexing in Google—this is pretty obvious, but it’s worth discussing regardless. Our customers whose global Alexa ranking is inside the top 2million are indexing in Google than those whose global ranking is outside the top 2million. Our customers whose global Alexa ranking is inside the top 1million are indexing in Google than those whose global ranking is outside the top 2million. 28% more images 41% more images 3. Image Uniqueness & Duplicate Content Image uniqueness is an opaque thing to measure, but it seems that Google is starting to take this more seriously. Our analysis here is only anecdotal, but it seems that merchants whose images are very unique, highly detailed, and distinguishable are much more reliably indexed. For example, something like a white T-shirt on a light colored background with very little detail on the T-shirt seems to be demoted by Google. This concept is particularly important for merchants who are selling products that are not unique—like a retailer who carries many brand names. For example, a shop that sells Zippo lighters and uses product imagery provided by Zippo without shooting their own unique product photography—Google does not seem to like this one bit. One theory is that Google considers the images to be duplicate content. The images from the authoritative source seem to take precedence in every scenario. Conclusion It is still early days for our app, however the results to date were too exciting not to share. If you know anyone using Shopify, please recommend that they consider , available in the Shopify app store with plans starting at $4 / month. Image Sitemap for Shopify

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Lessons from submitting 500k images from Shopify stores to Google for indexing

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Lessons from submitting 500k images from Shopify stores to Google for indexing

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William Belk

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