Will it hurt my ranking to change a popular image?

I have an image on my main page that brings a lot of traffic through google image search. It's always shown in the top 3 images for my main keyword search.

I want to do a redesign of my main page, but that would mean getting rid of this image.

Is this going to hurt my ranking since I will then lose the traffic that I'm getting from this image?

Is there a way to make a new main page and somehow leave the other one in such a way that the image in the image search is still linked from the google result?


Thanks!

If you remove the image from the main page, you're definitely going to lose traffic from Google Images. But this won't directly hurt your rankings in the main (text) SERP. Organic rankings are mostly a product of your backlinks, your domain trust, and the text content on your page (plus other smaller factors). However, it's possible that you'll lose a few links from people who linked to your home page exclusively because of the image when they find out you've removed it. You could also experience a higher bounce rate.

But you can still somewhat retain the traffic from Google Images by putting the same image on another web page of yours. As far as I know, the Google Image search only shows the page on which an image appears so that users can understand the context. I'm not completely sure if it's just a secondary variable though.

So if you put the image on another page, you'll probably still rank as before but this time with the new page in the "context" portion. However, your main page must've been pretty powerful backlink-wise and if this was the reason the image ranked (being placed on a powerful page), you may have to really work on the new page to retain your rankings.

Thank you so much for the reply.

I was afraid of this! I've left this image for over a year now because I enjoyed the traffic it brought. I'd like to put up something new and fresh, but I fear that it will cause a tumble.

Basically the new page would have the same exact information, just new images.


Thank you again for the explanation.

The main point is, google image crawler technology is under revision, as of now they cannot see the image content, but it will soon be changed as far as i know..

So basically, you can change the image, but if you replace the image, make sure you replace the same attributes as it was with the earlier image, and infact dont forget to wrap content around it if it was there earlier too..Stick the same ALT Tags, same image dimensions , same Image URL, Location, Path etc. and all those attributes that defined the old image..

Things shud stay as the way they are IMHO..I have'nt experimented with this scenario, however, It was a logical reply as to what I feel.. Counter attacks welcome

Aaah very interesting. It's starting to sink in now. I may find the courage to actually change it. Being able to move it would definitely help. I do have some links going right to the image but not that many. Mostly it's the traffic coming from the google image search that I'd like to keep.

Does it help your rankings to get more clicks from google searches including image searches? I thought this was true and would be why I never click on a competitor's results when I check my searches.

Google does track clicks through a cookie..so yes they do count..

What about the difference between index and home? If it's currently on index, is it possible to somehow leave it there but to have my main page change to home?

What if I redo my page but name the new image the same name, etc. So basically the page will have a different image but all of the wording, file name, etc will all be the same?

Yes, I am a