How does Google decide to grab images?

[RobBroekhuis]

I run a modest site with modest traffic - mostly from Google, which has been spidering my site regularly for months. Many of my visitors come looking for photos (plant photos, in my case), and I have plenty of those. Yet, Google has never come to grab images, and therefore my site doesn't show up in the image search. Is there anything I can/should do to get Google to come around for a LOOK?
Thanks
Rob

[Spica]

Rob:
There is nothing you can do but wait. Google doesn't update their image database very often. Some say maybe only every 6 months. I have a site that took well over a year for the images to appear in Google's images, but they eventually did.

[RobBroekhuis]

OK - no big deal, my site is non-commercial and it doesn't matter to me too much - was just wondering if I had to resubmit my url specifically for image capture. Since you say I don't, I'll be happy to sit back and see if they get around to me :-)

[Spica]

If you read this forum regularly, chances are that you will hear about the next Google image update before you notice the increased traffic to your own site (which will be quite noticeable if your site is mostly images).

[Lemon]

Google looks like they just did an image update, and unfortunately a LOT of my images got dropped. This is gonna hurt.