My design image with someone else's Zazzle URL

[SJoy]

I was doing a Google search tonight to see if I could come up with my Cow Skull Embosser. The results that showed up had my designed embosser photo with a different Zazzle product URL.  I clicked the link to try and figure out what was going on and it took me to the other person's Zazzle product. Has anyone else had this happen before? My design does not show up on their product page at all, but is being used as their cover photo on Google search.  

The search term I used was "wedding embosser with cow skull and flowers elegant". I am wondering how this has gotten mixed up and how it can be fixed. Obviously, the product title in the search doesn't match the photo. If someone clicked on it interested in this design, they will be taken to a design that is definitely not this one and I could possibly be losing a sale because it is link to the wrong product.

[SJoy]

Just adding that I noticed my product title is actually under the first product shown, but that design is not mine. When clicking on the first product, I am actually taken to my cow skull embosser product. And the same goes for the last product shown. It has my title but not my design and it takes me to my product page. 

[ColsCreations]

This has been happening for years. Google has changed much but I used to do go Google image searches - not where you upload an image and search for similar, but where you enter search terms and then choose "images" as type of result you want. I saw this type of mismatch with Z images vs products they go to a lot and just chalked it up to Google weirdness. I have no idea what causes this from a tech standpoint, but I strongly feel it's Google not Zazzle, and def not someone else using your images on their listing.

[SJoy]

I agree. It has to be Google's side because I checked the other listings and my design is no where to be seen.  I was just really surprised when I saw this. 

[Cat · Accepted solution]

Here's my kindergarten level understanding of this issue - I could be wrong, but this is my guess from years of trying to decipher what the Googelators are doing.

When Google crawls a page, it grabs all (or most) of the text and images that it finds on that page and puts it into its memory banks (database or whatever.) It doesn't necessarily distinguish between which image is the "main" image on the page (in this case, that would be the image of the product). I mean, I think its algorithm tries to sort out which text goes with which image and which links, but it doesn't necessarily understand that some of the stuff on the page is rotating, rather than a permanent fixture. So, on some level all it knows is that it found a bunch of text and a bunch of images on a particular page.

So, let's say that your embosser showed up in the list of "other products you might enjoy" when Google happened to be crawling the page for the Skull with top hat embosser. Since your title was there right next to the image of your embosser, it got that information and figured out that the title and the image went together... BUT they're still cataloged under the Skull with top hat page that it was crawling.  

Then, you come along and do a search using keywords from your title, and Google goes, "A Ha!" I've got a page with that text on it, and here's the picture that goes with it. It doesn't understand that your product wasn't a permanent part of the page, so it returns the page that it found them on which is the Skull Embosser page. Of course this time, when you click on it, Zazzle's algorithm shows different stuff in the "other designs you might like" section so your product is nowhere to be found.

I'm not skilled enough at SEO optimization to know if there's something that Zazzle could or should be doing to prevent this sort of result when Google crawls their pages. It also could be that it's beneficial to get those results because at least it takes the searcher to Zazzle rather than just not appearing in the search results at all.

Anyhow, I'm certainly no expert, so I could be completely off base here, but that's my best guess as to what's happening. 

[SJoy]

I can see this happening and it makes sense as to my search results.  When I clicked on Google shopping it was correct. I wish it wasn't so misleading on the image search though.  Thank your for your explanation!

[Connie]

Wow, this is a great explanation! I've seen this happen so many times when I'm reverse image searching using Google. It's super frustrating thinking I've actually found the image, only to click on the link and be taken to a totally different page. I finally figured out that they must be finding that image SOMEWHERE on the page, either in the site's version of "other designs you might like," or in an ad or something.

[Barbara]

I use DuckDuckGo, not Google, and when I used your search phrase, it came up with cow skulls of all sorts, none on Zazzle. So I found your embosser in your store and used its exact title for a search. The results were a lot closer but still not yours, and there were no embossers at all nor any links to Zazzle. Hence, the search algorithms seem to be very different but not the least good for embossers. Maybe Zazzle's blank-looking images?

To test this out, I used the title of one of my own products with a very clear image.  It came up on DuckDuckGo as the very first product on Zazzle. This made me think that the #1 problem might be Zazzle's images.

So then I went to another of your products--"Pink Plaid Poinsettia Christmas Throw Pillow"--and the results didn't have your pillow. The same happened with your Baby Piglet invitation. Both products have very clear images.

Then I looked at your tags. I've no idea if search engines are picking up on keywords, but this may be a heads-up for all of us. Here are your keywords for the piglet invite:

baby shower, pink baby shower invitations, watermelon, baby pig, piglet, baby shower invitation, baby shower invitations girl, something sweet is, on its way, cute girl baby shower invitations

I can see you were having the same problem I often have, which is to come up with an array of tags wherein each is unique. What we're looking for are words and phrases a person is likely to use as search terms. But is this the problem? I've no idea. All I know is that, apparently, which search engine a person uses can make a huge difference.

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