Why does "Search for any text" find nothing?

Question

I just uploaded an image of a page from a baptism register, where as a service to my fellow genealogists I filled in the names of all the children with the surnames of both parents in the box marked Add a comment for others who see this photo.

I wondered whether a search on both names would hit that box (obviously if it does, such boxes are highly useful and I would propose that all of us make an effort to provide such information).

Result, negative. Unfair to do that so soon, so I tried one of the older images on this profile and cut-and-pasted some words directly from its comment box into the search box. These words were:

Gertruida VAN ZYL

and they appear in the comment to an image that was uploaded well over a year ago.

Result, three hits to other images where the words do not appear consecutively, but not to this one. I studied all three carefully but could not figure out why they were found but not the profile I want.

Answer 1

Hi Dirk,

There are certain google tags that are added to data on the pages to identify information. One of them tags the name of the image which will give you an instant top result. It appears as if the the comments have a low or no value.

Have a look at structured data

https://search.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/u/0/#url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wikitree.com%2Fphoto%2Fjpg%2FVan_Zyl-1327

Comments

So the problem is that WikiTree calls that box a comment. If it said something like Information, maybe it would work better.

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I think it is a comment box pirated by WT for source notations

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Have a look at this page

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Help:Schema.org#Notes

Maybe you could ask that it be added

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So is the issue basically that the image search doesn't search the text in the image comments?

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That is the way it looks to me Jamie.

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Ok, I'll add it to the list of future improvements.