Google images - how are the pictures ranked?

Factual Questions
1

On Google images, are the pictures that are shown to you, when you search on a term, ranked in order of popularity. As in - the first two or three rows are the most clicked on across the internet? Or is it all random? Or something else?

I ask because I was rather shocked today when I did a google image search on my name and my picture appeared on the third row of pictures. It’s a picture from my LinkedIn profile. My name isn’t particularly unusual.

How did my picture appear on the third row of Google Images? Am I an internet hit without knowing it? Should I be marketing this image?

I’ve now cancelled the Linkedin account because I’m not sure I want my face splashed all over the front page of the internet but should I reconsider and embrace my new found fame?

2

Hiring the best and brightest people in the world to develop algorithms that can do this sort of thing is what Google is all about - the details of how they work are of course proprietary, and it’s not something I know a lot about - but you’re likely giving them information about yourself which they can put to this sort of use all the time.

3

Also note that the search results you see are not necessarily the same as the search results someone else sees

4

Does Pigeonrank work for images?

5

This.

6

Yep, it’s based on what Google knows about you.

If you do an image search on the word “scout”, you may see Boy Scouts first, or IH Scout trucks if Google knows you like old 4X4s, or any of the other things that Scout can stand for, depending on your interests, your location and your social circle.

So if your name is John Williams and you do a search on “john williams”, you may see yourself on the first page and get the impression that you’re almost as famous as the composer. You’re not, sorry.

7

I use Google to search, but I don’t have gmail or a Google login. I’ve never bought anything from the Google Play store. Does Google therefore know *less *about me than about people who participate in all their platforms?

8

I mentioned this in another thread – I got an amusing image result the other day when I googled “Chauncey Gardener” looking for info on Peter Sellers’ character in Being There. One of the first image matches is of Trump. Knowing that the search algorithms are influenced by my browsing behavior, I asked some coworkers to try the same search…they got the Trump image too.

9

Yes, I accept the personalised data point and it’s probably correct but I did the search on a work computer not my home computer. And a work colleague also searched on my name on her computer and got the same result. And her computer is not one I ever use. The only thing we would have in common is that our location is the same.

Maybe I need to get a friend living in a different city to do the same search to eliminate the possibility that it is just a personalised result?

10

If you’re logged into ANY google product (youtube, android, etc.) on a device you’ll get personalized search results on google. If you look in the upper-right hand corner of the google search page it’ll have button that says “sign in” if you’re not signed in, and your user icon if you are (if you haven’t set an icon, I think your icon defaults to the first character of your name, look at a youtube comments section to see what I mean).

To get non-personalized results, switch to private browsing mode (IE calls it inprivate browsing, firefox calls it a private window, not sure what it’s called in chrome or edge since I don’t use either of those).