Google Starts to Index Images Uploaded to Blogger

Even if this sounds hard to believe, Google Image Search started to index images uploaded to Blogger in December 2007. Until this month, all the images were prevented from being indexed by search engines for unknown reasons. This move is closely related to the fact that the images hosted at Picasa Web Albums started to be indexed by Google.

The chart from Google Analytics shows the number of referrals from images.google.com for this blog:


... and here are some results from Google Image Search:


The images uploaded from Blogger's interface are hosted at Picasa Web Albums, but they're also available at subdomains like bpX.blogger.com, where X is a digit. Another Blogger oddity, inherited from Picasa Web, is that you can't directly link to an image (if you click on a link to one of the two images uploaded above, you'll see a dialog that asks you to download the image). Blogger even has a workaround for this silly restriction: it automatically creates web pages that include the pictures (here's a link to the same image, but this time the image is included in a web page).


Images uploaded before August last year, when Blogger launched the latest major upgrade, are still not crawlable.

Picasa 2.7 for Linux

Google has a preview release of Picasa 2.7 for Linux. The previous version launched last year didn't include the features from Picasa 2.5+ for Windows (like the Picasa Web integration), so this is a good opportunity to add these features to Linux. Here's what is new in Picasa 2.7 for Linux:

* Upload to Picasa Web Albums
Use the new "Web Album" button to post your best photos online to share with friends and family.

* Save edits to disk
Save edits, undo saves, and revert to the original file with ease. We've got batch saving too! Picasa will even match the jpeg quality of the original. Right-click on your saved files to try the new "locate original" feature.

* Folder hierarchy views
Browse through folders Explorer-style. Use the button at the top of your Albums List to try them out.

* Improvements to Import
Import into an existing folder. (...) We've made importing photos from your camera faster too.

* Better RAW support
Now you can work with RAW files from the Canon 30D, the Nikon D200, Adobe DNG files, and more.

* Many other enhancements
Larger thumbnails, better caption editing, ability to configure the row of buttons, special "Starred Photos" album, search by ISO and focal length.

The release still doesn't support videos, full-screen slideshows and it's still using WINE.

More about Picasa for Linux at Google Groups.

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