An update to referral source URLs for Google Images
Stay organized with collections
Save and categorize content based on your preferences.
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Every day, hundreds of millions of people use
Google Images to visually discover and
explore content on the web. Whether it be finding ideas for your next baking project, or visual
instructions on how to fix a flat tire, exploring image results can sometimes be much more
helpful than exploring text.
Updating the referral source
For webmasters, it hasn't always been easy to understand the role Google Images plays in driving
site traffic. To address this, we will roll out a new
referrer URL specific to
Google Images over the next few months. The referrer URL is part of the HTTP header, and indicates
the last page the user was on and clicked to visit the destination webpage.
If you create software to track or analyze website traffic, we want you to be prepared for this
change. Make sure that you are ingesting the new referer URL, and attribute the traffic to Google
Images. The new referer URL is:
https://images.google.com
.
If you use Google Analytics to track
site data, the new referral URL will be automatically ingested and traffic will be attributed to
Google Images appropriately. Just to be clear, this change will not affect
Search Console. Webmasters
will continue to receive an aggregate list of top search queries that drive traffic to their site.
How this affects country-specific queries
The new referer URL has the same
country code top level domain
(ccTLD) as the URL used for searching on Google Images. In practice, this means that most visitors
worldwide come from images.google.com. That's because last year,
we made a change
so that google.com became the default choice for searchers worldwide. However, some users may
still choose to go directly to a country specific service, such as google.co.uk for the UK. For
this use case, the referer uses that country TLD (for example, images.google.co.uk).
We hope this change will foster a healthy visual content ecosystem. If you're interested in
learning how to optimize your pages for Google Images, please refer to the
Google Image Publishing Guidelines.
If you have questions, feedback or suggestions, please let us know through the
Webmaster Tools Help Forum.
Posted by Ashutosh Agarwal, Product Manager, Google Images
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["\u003cp\u003eGoogle will continue using \u003ccode\u003ehttps://www.google.com\u003c/code\u003e (or the appropriate ccTLD) as the referrer URL for all traffic from Google Images, and will not be providing a Google Images specific referrer URL.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eTraffic data from Google Images can be found in the Google Search Console Performance Report to help webmasters understand the traffic Google Images drives to their sites.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003ePreviously, Google announced that they would be rolling out a new referrer URL specific to Google Images (images.google.com); however, they have decided to not move forward with this plan.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eGoogle Images utilizes the same country code top level domain (ccTLD) as the URL used for searching, meaning most visitors will come from images.google.com.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],["Google decided against using `images.google.com` as a specific referrer URL for Google Images traffic. Instead, they will continue using `https://www.google.com` (or the corresponding ccTLD) as the referrer for all Google Images traffic, measured within the Search Console Performance Report. Previously, they planned to introduce `https://images.google.com` as a distinct referrer, automatically tracked by Google Analytics. This change means webmasters should refer to the mentioned Search console report for this information.\n"],null,["# An update to referral source URLs for Google Images\n\nTuesday, July 17, 2018\n| After testing and further consideration, we have determined that the best place to measure query and click traffic from Google Images is in the [Search Console Performance Report](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7576553). Accordingly, we will continue to use `https://www.google.com` (or the appropriate ccTLD) as the referrer URL for all traffic from Google Images, and will not be providing a Google Images specific referrer URL (images.google.com).\n\n\nEvery day, hundreds of millions of people use\n[Google Images](https://images.google.com/) to visually discover and\nexplore content on the web. Whether it be finding ideas for your next baking project, or visual\ninstructions on how to fix a flat tire, exploring image results can sometimes be much more\nhelpful than exploring text.\n\nUpdating the referral source\n----------------------------\n\n\nFor webmasters, it hasn't always been easy to understand the role Google Images plays in driving\nsite traffic. To address this, we will roll out a new\n[referrer URL](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer) specific to\nGoogle Images over the next few months. The referrer URL is part of the HTTP header, and indicates\nthe last page the user was on and clicked to visit the destination webpage.\n\n\nIf you create software to track or analyze website traffic, we want you to be prepared for this\nchange. Make sure that you are ingesting the new referer URL, and attribute the traffic to Google\nImages. The new referer URL is: \n\n```\nhttps://images.google.com\n```\n.\n\n\nIf you use [Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com/) to track\nsite data, the new referral URL will be automatically ingested and traffic will be attributed to\nGoogle Images appropriately. Just to be clear, this change will not affect\n[Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console). Webmasters\nwill continue to receive an aggregate list of top search queries that drive traffic to their site.\n\nHow this affects country-specific queries\n-----------------------------------------\n\n\nThe new referer URL has the same\n[country code top level domain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain)\n(ccTLD) as the URL used for searching on Google Images. In practice, this means that most visitors\nworldwide come from images.google.com. That's because last year,\n[we made a change](https://www.blog.google/products/search/making-search-results-more-local-and-relevant/)\nso that google.com became the default choice for searchers worldwide. However, some users may\nstill choose to go directly to a country specific service, such as google.co.uk for the UK. For\nthis use case, the referer uses that country TLD (for example, `images.google.co.uk`).\n\n\nWe hope this change will foster a healthy visual content ecosystem. If you're interested in\nlearning how to optimize your pages for Google Images, please refer to the\n[Google Image Publishing Guidelines](/search/docs/appearance/google-images).\nIf you have questions, feedback or suggestions, please let us know through the\n[Webmaster Tools Help Forum](https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!categories/webmasters).\n\nPosted by Ashutosh Agarwal, Product Manager, Google Images"]]
