Community Wishlist/Wishes/(Commons) file description pages should be indexable by (Google) search
(Commons) file description pages should be indexable by (Google) search
Description
There is a longstanding problem with namespace File description pages, where Google essentially ignores almost all of them.
This causes several issues: 1. The content of the metadata listed on the file description page is not discoverable 2. Not all thumbnail versions of images are indexed by Google, causing only tiny thumbnails (as included in the article) to show up in the image search of Google. 3. The license information for all these images is not indexed
The suspected root cause of this, is that all incoming links to these pages have a file extension in the end of the path of the link. This causes google's indexer to assume that it is an actual media file, instead of a (html) web page, and it hands it over to their image engine, which can't handle them.
We should find a way to fix or bypass this problem. Wikimedia can reach out to Google and request their assistance if required.
It is my opinion that this will greatly strengthen Commons, both as a platform of knowledge and also the community that surrounds Commons. It might cause a new influx of users who are interested in this topic and helping out with this topic. It is also squarely within the mission that we facilitate the spread of this knowledge.
Assigned focus area
Unassigned.
Type of wish
Bug fix
Related projects
Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, Wikisource
Affected users
External potential users of our mediafiles