A sure-fire way to increase your hits.

[Desmond Riordan]

A poster on this forum had suggested that a photograph entitled 'Nude Cheerleaders' would attract more attention than one with a more prosaic title. I decided to give it a try.
I have posted two identical photographs, one entitled 'Bolton Town Hall' (for that is what it is!) and the other 'Nude Cheerleaders'. you can find the pictures here:

http://www.panoramio.com/user/3186024?comment_page=1&photo_page=2

Since posting them last January 'Bolton Town Hall' has had 34 hits and 'Nude Cheerleaders' has had 256. This works out at 0.25 hits per day for 'Town Hall' and 1.8 for 'Cheerleaders'. This means that 'Cheerleaders' has had just over seven times as many hits. The mathematicians amongst you will have correctly deduced that the pictures were posted a few days apart.
I suppose these results tell us a great deal about our preoccupations.
If anybody else would like to try a similar experiment I would be very interested to see the results.

[Draken]

Quote Desmond Riordan:

Mmm, interesting experiment indeed.

Could you please disaggregate the viewing sources of the Cheerleaders photo? I am sure a lot of views come from GE where people hover over the photo find the title on the icon without actually seeing the photo until they click... what a disappointment after clicking!! They must feel deceived.

[Desmond Riordan]

Quote Draken:

[

Could you please disaggregate the viewing sources of the Cheerleaders photo? I am sure a lot of views come from GE where people hover over the photo find the title on the icon without actually seeing the photo until they click... what a disappointment after clicking!!

Glad to oblige, Draken. The stats for the last 30 days are as follows:

Panoramio: 140 hits (peaking at an average of 26 hits pd from 25th-27th March).
Google Earth: 35 hits
Google Maps: 3 hits
External Widgets (whatever they are!): 1 hit

Quite surprising as, like you, I would have thought that the majority of hits would have come from Google Earth.

[Draken]

Thank you Desmond.

I checked and if you look at the overall views (instead of only the last 30 days) you get:

Panoramio: 157 views
GE: 93 views
GM: 4
API: 2

Still Panoramio is the highest source but the the GE views are closer to what we both were expecting. It seems Panoramio users first read the titles and then look at the image!!

[AustinMN]

Quote Draken:

Still Panoramio is the highest source but the the GE views are closer to what we both were expecting. It seems Panoramio users first read the titles and then look at the image!!

Keep in mind that if you are searching using Google Image Search, it leads you to Panoramio, not Google Earth. I could imagine some following the search result figuring that Google got the wrong photo from the page, and that there was a photo of a Nude Cheerleader somewhere...and some would probably just follow every result.

Austin

[AustinMN]

BTW, If I started labeling my photos "Nude Cheerleader" the only sure-fired thing would be divorce court. I might try something like "Can't afford my rent," though.

Austin

[Galatas ©]

Quote AustinMN:

Keep in mind that if you are searching using Google Image Search, it leads you to Panoramio, not Google Earth.

Austin

I have often thought that some of my Panoramio viewcounts are higher than I would expect from members browsing my photos. Your observation explains it.

[RoarX]

I have for long suspected that the title matters for the view count. Austin's take on it seems to be right. Just look at these stats, how the Google search results (the links) corresponds with the whole or parts of the title. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/19699699/stats

If I in Google image search, search for '360 spherical panorama' the photo gets high in the results when I ask for large photos. If I search for the rest of the title: NTNU Dragvoll university, it also gets high in the results.

So, the title matters.

[jonathan.nyc]

The title does matter. I used to leave the title blank, but I think I got some low traffic as a result.

Now I try to make my titles interesting, but I never put up a false description.

[Desmond Riordan]

Given the amount of traffic that the 'cheerleaders' picture generated I thought it would be interesting to see if a link to the picture would show up if I Googled 'Nude Cheerleaders' - and there it was on page 2. I then looked to see what if I did the same on Google Image. Wow, four hours of research just flies by, doesn't it?

[Galatas ©]

Quote Desmond Riordan:

............ Wow, four hours just flies by, doesn't it?

When undertaking research it's important not to overlook details. I can well imagine one page taking four hours if done thoroughly ops:

[QuentinUK]

Google:- nude running man
(Don't get excited it's a sculpture)

On 17 Oct 2010 in the "Getting More Views" thread I suggested:-
"Give the photo a title that will attract Google searches"

I mentioned this photo. Since then the photo has risen to be the top hit.

The interesting thing is the long list of links on the stats page showing the Google queries people do.