Many people, including me, will do a Google image search when they look up an artist online.
As an artist, you will probably want the pictures showing on this search to reflect accurately what you do.
If you have been painting for a long time, searching your name on Google image search might show images that are not relevant anymore, not in line with your current style or simply not technically as strong as your current work.
In some cases, it is possible to remove the images you don’t like in the Google search images. Here is how you can do it.
1- Start by making a Google image search with your name
Look at the results, you can see the website from where the image was taken in the caption underneath it.
2- Option 1: The picture is from your own website
You can remove the picture form your website
If the picture is from your website, you need to remove it or replace it with a picture you like best.
If you did set up a sitemap for your website, you will want to update it as well.
You can discourage search engines from indexing a page
If you know how to access the files through FTP on your website, you can discourage search engines from crawling and referencing some of your website pages. Read more about that here:
2- Option 1: The picture is from a website you have access to
Sometimes, the picture is from a website where you have your work listed, like Fine Art America, Red Bubble, Saatchi Art…. You can go to your profile on that website, In that case: Fine Art America and remove the image. Then allow a few days for Google crawlers to crawl the new version of the website and remove the image.
3- The image is from a YouTube video on your channel
You can either delete the video or make it unlisted or private if you want to keep it for your archives but have it not listed on Google.
4- You removed the image but it is still listed on Google image search after a few days
If you have a Google webmaster account, you can ask Google to remove an image that has been deleted but is still listed:
Originally from France, I have been living in North Vancouver, Canada for the past 20 years.
My work has been collected and exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally. I am also part of the Art Rentals and sales program of the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Many of my paintings have been published in Art books and magazines (Artist Magazine, Watercolor Artist Magazine, Acrylic Magazine, International Artist Magazine). I wrote 2 art instruction books with North Light/F+W Books.
I have been writing for the last 5 years for my blog: paintingdemos.com, that has a mailing list of about 10 000 subscribers and about 20 000 visitors per month.
I am an active member in the community, as a co-founder of the North Shore Art crawl, a co-founder of a weekly life drawing group, a board member of the North Vancouver Arts Council, and have been invited as a juror for public art, art grants and juried exhibitions. You can read more about my collaborations here.
