Tags, labels and image descriptions

Recently after logging into my Flickr account I discovered an option I found interesting under the stats tab. I've long been aware of the importance "meta tags" have been in bringing traffic to your website, although in the early years these simple and not so commonly known inserts were abused by redirecting irrelevant content responses through search engines.

Flickr's stats page shows the domains from where traffic has come from and the keywords used, including other useful data as well. You can review your current and previous day's worth of activity but are limited to only the prior 28 days of statistics. To find this information you can type in the desired date in your location bar. It would be nice if Flickr would archive a longer time frame. :)

Listed below are some of the more commonly used search phrases to find my images via Google. Many of these were obvious, however some of the keywords used to find their way to stats were befuddling to say the least.

Random order: Harley Davidson, Harly Bikers, Bikers, Trucking in the USA, Trucking, Ronnie Van Zant, Lynyrd Skynyrd, RVZ, 50's Rock, Black and White Highways, Trick my Truck, Highway Horizon, Little Cowgirls, Wyoming, Nascar, Vegas in Black and White, Rocky Mountains, I-80, Trucking Logo and Truck Stops round off the top 20.

Today the use of tags, titles and image descriptions are all important in the indexing for search engines so it seems as much as ever. The downside I suppose to some photographers, would be your images can be viewed and downloaded in larger formats than you may want to be available.