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2008 Google Image Labeler – Help Google Image Search

Posted by Upright Team

I just noticed this cool feature on Google – the Google Image Labeler. It’s Google’s way of getting its users to help improve their image search feature on their site. If you’ve used Google in the last two years, you have seen images being blended into certain search results. And we’ve been saying for years now that it’s important to optimize your images so they have a better chance of appearing in search results.

Until recently, the methods of optimizing your images were to:

  • Add keywords to the alt attributes of your images on your site.
  • Add keywords to the image name.
  • Surround your image with relevant keyword rich text so the engines might associate the image with the topic of your page.

I’ve often been looking for an image online but found it difficult to find what I was looking for because images were rarely named with keywords, much less tagged with relevant terms that would make them findable. But the Google Image Labeler feature seems like a great way to entice users to get more involved in the labeling of images so that these images become more visible to the searchers out there.

Go to Google and click “Images” in the top left corner of the page. Or you can just go to http://images.google.com to go directly to the Google Image search. Then, you’ll see a link to Google Image Labeler. Once you’re there, Google gives a nice brief explanation of how it works. Just click the button to “Start Labeling” and you’re off! It’s a fun little exercise and something that may ultimately make image search better for all of us.