Google Images

How to get Google to spider

[okephoto]

I tend to have very image rich sites and receive much of my traffic from Google images but what images are spidered is very inconsistant.

Any thoughts on how to create images that will do well in a Google image search? I've played with filenames (ex vancouverisland.jpg, vancouver-island.jpg, vancouver_island.jpg) alt tags and the like but can't narrow this down.

One trend I tend to see is that images on the home or index page do better?

Thanks for your thoughts.

[OptiRex]

I don't think anyone really knows how long it takes to get images into the Google directory.

I've seen some get in within a few weeks, pure luck I think they were IMO, the general impression is that it takes a minimum 6 months or so however I've seen some take 2-3 years.

In general Yahoo! is much better and faster for images.

Incidentally these image searches and referrals distort your visitor numbers massively and can lead to excessive bandwidth usage if you're not careful.

One trend I tend to see is that images on the home or index page do better?

No difference in my experience and I have several thousand images.