NOINDEX, FOLLOW on product page - how about images indexing?

[speedbird1229]

Hi,

Since we have a lot of similar products with duplicate descriptions, I decided to NOINDEX, FOLLOW most of these different variants which have duplicate content. However, I guess it would be useful in marketing terms if Google image search still listed the images of the products in image search. How does the image search of Google actually work - does it read the NOINDEX on the product page and therefore skip the image also or is the image search completely dependent on the ALT tag of any image found on our site?

Thanks!

[Hutch42]

You are correct in your assumption, if you are not allowing Google to index those pages then Google image search will likewise not index images from those pages.  While you could then create gallery pages for your images that did not have noindex meta tags, without having other information on those pages the images will not rank well (and at that point you would be better spending your time just creating unique content for your similar product pages).  Unfortunately, if you want your images to searchable you will need to make your pages as well

[LynnPatchett]

HI,

I had the understanding that noindexing pages would not stop images on them from being indexed - google runs another bot for images which is different from the 'normal' bot - and the noindex directive is applicable to the PAGE url, not the IMAGE url. There is a discussion here that mentions a noindex tag specific for images which would imply that your images should still be in the index even if you noindex the page. Hope that makes sense!

[max.favilli]

But, in the first place, why did you choose to NOINDEX, FOLLOW those product pages?

If you have a preferred product page among those different variants seen as duplicate why don't you just use canonical to point there?

What do you think is the benefit of noindexing? Theoretically leaving them there with the duplicate content and a canonical you are wasting some google bot crawling budget, but unless you need google to crawl your pages with a high frequency (because your content is frequently updated) I wouldn't care much.

Personally I see de-indexing as the last resort.