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digitalmars.D - Official DLang logo re: Google?

reply Ethan <gooberman gmail.com> writes:
Just something I noticed with a recommended Google search last 
night:

https://imgur.com/bU5SvGR
https://imgur.com/yqfHkx4

All the cool new languages have their logo show up on Google 
listings like that. Which I assumed were just scraped from 
Wikipedia. D does not. Following the rabbit hole, it turns out 
that Google is preferring a screenshot of a code-completion 
plugin for some random text editor.

(inb4 "it's not random" - yes it is, it's for KDE and thus caters 
to a minority of a vast minority. And is also beside the point 
here.)

So not being well versed in SEO, does anyone have an idea of how 
to go about fixing this?
May 16 2019
next sibling parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 09:41:13 UTC, Ethan wrote:

 So not being well versed in SEO, does anyone have an idea of 
 how to go about fixing this?


It looks like it simply provides the top image used in the google 
image search ranking.

How to fix it? Dunno, get people to link to the D wikipedia entry.
May 16 2019
parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 12:26:15 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 09:41:13 UTC, Ethan wrote:

 So not being well versed in SEO, does anyone have an idea of 
 how to go about fixing this?


 It looks like it simply provides the top image used in the 
 google image search ranking.

 How to fix it? Dunno, get people to link to the D wikipedia 
 entry.


Actually, it looks like they use more than one strategy.  I don't 
exactly know why they use the wikipedia icon for Ada, but it has 
very high ranking.

But the Swift icon from wikipedia is completely different. In 
that case they appear to use a high resolution icon from the home 
page.  Perhaps <link rel="apple-touch-icon" 
href="https://developer.apple.com/swift/images/swift-touch-icon.png" />.

So first step would be to add links to high resolution images on 
the homepage. Then perhaps try to increase the visibility of hubs 
like dlang.org and 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language) ?

It is hard to tell exactly what heuristics google use unless they 
publish it,  but those heuristics also change over time...

Besides, they might have people hand pick icons for the most 
notable entries.
May 16 2019
parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 12:40:57 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 Besides, they might have people hand pick icons for the most 
 notable entries.


Perhaps not. Go-lang has the same issue and one would think that 
Google would have added that as a special case, but apparently 
not. The go lang website also does not provide <link 
rel="apple-touch-icon" >, so that seems to be one factor.

Best bet seems to be to add high resolution icon to home page and 
increase ranking of home page.

Perhaps the correlation with Wikipedia is incidental because 
Wikipedia generally has very high ranking. I don't know.
May 16 2019
parent reply Ethan <gooberman gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 12:52:06 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 Perhaps the correlation with Wikipedia is incidental because 
 Wikipedia generally has very high ranking. I don't know.


Perhaps the correlation with Wikipedia is because that second 
screenshot explicitly states it's languages as mentioned on 
Wikipedia.

Google got its wires crossed here, and we can fix it with some 
SEO. So let's stick to solutions instead of multiple "I don't 
know" posts here please.
May 16 2019
next sibling parent Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 13:05:44 UTC, Ethan wrote:

 Google got its wires crossed here, and we can fix it with some 
 SEO. So let's stick to solutions instead of multiple "I don't 
 know" posts here please.


Well, that is how SEO is done. You look for correlations and 
formulate a hypothesis.
May 16 2019
prev sibling parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 13:05:44 UTC, Ethan wrote:

 On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 12:52:06 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
 wrote:

 Perhaps the correlation with Wikipedia is incidental because 
 Wikipedia generally has very high ranking. I don't know.


 Perhaps the correlation with Wikipedia is because that second 
 screenshot explicitly states it's languages as mentioned on 
 Wikipedia.


To make it simple:

1.) there is weak correlation between wikipedia and the images 
chosen

2.) there is strong correlation between high resolution icons on 
the home page and the images chosen

3.) there is correlation between high image ranking and images 
chosen

There is no point in trying more extensive SEO before you have 
tried 2.) and resubmitted the site to Google for processing.
May 16 2019
parent Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 13:24:53 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 There is no point in trying more extensive SEO before you have 
 tried 2.) and resubmitted the site to Google for processing.


Ok, so having looked a bit more on this. The Swift icon is most 
likely picked up from one of two meta-tags, my guess is Open 
Graph.

<meta property="og:image" 
content="https://developer.apple.com/swift/images/swift-og.png" />
<meta name="twitter:image" 
content="https://developer.apple.com/swift/images/swift-og.png" />


Crystal is a nonlogo taken from medium.com
matlab is a nonlogo taken from mathworks.com
R is a nonlogo taken from revolution-computing.typepad.com

Rust is a logo taken from wikipedia.
Java is a logo taken from wikipedia.
C++ is a logo taken from wikipedia

Python is a logo taken from python.rs
Kotlin is a logo taken from pbs.twimg.com

So no clear pattern, site ranking seems to be dominating, perhaps 
except for the python.rs case.

Anyway, it is not completely unlikely that they use machine 
learning to find correlation between imagery and mentions of the 
programming language (by weighting and ranking) to determine the 
icon. Then select the most typical image.

But still, your best bet is to start by providing high resolution 
square icon perhaps as an open graph meta data link in addition 
to an icon link. You have to start with what you have some hope 
of influencing with little effort. Your best bet is to provide 
structured data in the formats that Google has stated public 
support for, as a start.

Anyway, if they use weighted algorithms then there is no clear 
answer to what you have to do to get over the threshold.
May 16 2019
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 5/16/2019 2:41 AM, Ethan wrote:

 Just something I noticed with a recommended Google search last night:
 
 https://imgur.com/bU5SvGR
 https://imgur.com/yqfHkx4
 
 All the cool new languages have their logo show up on Google listings like
that. 
 Which I assumed were just scraped from Wikipedia. D does not. Following the 
 rabbit hole, it turns out that Google is preferring a screenshot of a 
 code-completion plugin for some random text editor.


Checking several, there is no consistency about where the images are pulled
from.
May 16 2019
parent reply Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 16:33:12 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 5/16/2019 2:41 AM, Ethan wrote:

 Just something I noticed with a recommended Google search last 
 night:
 
 https://imgur.com/bU5SvGR
 https://imgur.com/yqfHkx4
 
 All the cool new languages have their logo show up on Google 
 listings like that. Which I assumed were just scraped from 
 Wikipedia. D does not. Following the rabbit hole, it turns out 
 that Google is preferring a screenshot of a code-completion 
 plugin for some random text editor.


 Checking several, there is no consistency about where the 
 images are pulled from.


Right, no simple consistency, but the languages which were 
assigned non-logo images had in common that they displayed images 
of source-code.

So it is not unlikely that Google, when it lacks other 
information, looks for similar-looking images that are displayed 
on pages which cover the topic.

However, Google Search formally does support the display of logos 
for organizations as structured data (schema.org).
May 16 2019
parent Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQ=?= <ola.fosheim.grostad gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 16 May 2019 at 16:45:19 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:

 However, Google Search formally does support the display of 
 logos for organizations as structured data (schema.org).


Or to be more precise, you can provide a hint of what the logo 
ought to be. E.g. the Apple logo is picked up from structured 
data from a random page.

But it seems that this could be open to abuse (e.g. someone 
replacing it with something offensive), so I assume it might only 
have a relevancy weight associated with it and that Google then 
picks  representative images from other sites (making it 
difficult to change the image for "political purposes").

Hence, your best bet is to get high ranking webpages that mention 
D to use the logo (as well as adding structured data).
May 16 2019