Heck Of A Guy

Google Image Search For All Heck of a Guy Graphics – Page 1
[Click on image to enlarge]

How To Search For Images At The Heck Of A Guy Blog¹

After publishing Found It, yesterday’s post about the revised search process for Heck of a Guy blog and GoodCleanWholesome Fun tumblelog, I received an emailed query about a similar search engine for graphics.

The bad news is that, as as far as I know, there is no nifty module one can easily install on site to search graphics at a given URL analogous to the copy and paste code Google provides to search text at a specific site.

The good news is that Google does offer (as do other search engines) a relatively simple means to accomplish a restricted search at their standard images search page.

The bad news is that the graphics search of the Heck of a Guy site (GoodCleanWholesome Fun has too few indexed graphics for the effective use of a search engine) is significantly impaired because

1. Only those graphics that are indexed by Google can be searched by Google.² At the time of this writing, 719 separate Heck of a Guy images are indexed by Google.
2. Most of the filenames and ALT tags of the graphics used on the Heck of a Guy blog are poorly labeled. As it turns out, the filenames and ALT tags are two of the most important sources Google uses to associate an image and its identifying name.³

The good news is that it’s worth describing the methodology because some Heck of a Guy photos can be found with this technique and, more importantly, the same process can be used to find images at other sites authored by more accomplished labelers.

The really good news is that this is the final item in this good news-bad news sequence.

The Semi-automated Image Search At Heck of a Guy

1. Click on link to go to Google Image Search Of Heck Of A Guy SiteThis should open a new window of Google Images Search with the following text⁴ entered in the search box: site:1heckofaguy.comIn that format, site: is an “operator” that restricts the Google search to only those images found at a given site or domain, and 1heckofaguy.com identifies the site to which the search is restricted. Note that there is no space between the operator and the description of the query term that follows it. Since there are no other restrictions in this case, the new window will begin a search for all the images Google has indexed at 1heckofaguy.com, and that first window will show the first page of the total results of that search.
2. To search for Heck Of A Guy graphics associated with specific search terms, add the search terms, according to Google protocol, to the search box following the already entered text: site:1heckofaguy.comMake sure at least one empty space separates the search terms from the already-entered text: site:1heckofaguy.com (see illustration below)
3. After the empty space, add the search terms according to standard Google protocol
4. Press “Enter” or click “Search Images” to begin the search

Google Image Search Box With Operator Limiting Search To Heck of a Guy Blog

The Manual Image Search At Heck of a Guy

1. Open the Google Image Search page at http://images.google.com or click on this link to open a new window of Standard Google Image Search
2. Enter the following into the search box: site:1heckofaguy.com
   or paste and copy that text into the search box.

   Note: Substituting another site or domain, of course, limits the search to that site or domain. For example, entering site:alignmap.com in the search box restricts the search to the AlignMap.com site.

3. Make sure there is at least one empty space following site:1heckofaguy.com (see above illustration); then add the search terms according to Google protocol
4. Press “Enter” or click “Search Images” to begin the search.

1. The instructions for this search process will be added to WhereTheHeck Search for future reference↩
2. The must-be-indexed-by-Google requirement is identical for text and graphic search processes.↩
3. The lousy labeling was, in turn, caused by my cluelessness about this and almost every other aspect of blogging when I began publishing Heck of a Guy two years ago.↩
4. Note: the indicated text is italicized only for clarification; the italics have no significance otherwise↩