Images not indexed in Google - possible reasons?

[marvin]

I rank well in Google SERPS (top 5 results) for several keywords and have done so for some time now (over 6 months).

On the pages which rank well for these keywords I have several pictures (relating to the keyword) which are just not getting picked up by Google images. I have searched this forum for possible reasons but I seem to be doing everything right, eg.

I have no robots.txt file which might restrict search engines from crawling.
I use the keywords in the image title and alt tag, for example - the html for a typical image of mine would be:-

<img class="xx" src="photographs/keyword/keyword_1_medium.jpg" alt="keyword blah blah blah" />

On a typical page I may have up to about 10 images relating to the main keyword, the HTML of each one following the same format.

Does anybody have any suggestions why my pictures aren't getting displayed in Google Image SERPS?

NB - I have the same problem with Altavista and Yahoo (MSN search does, however, display my images).

[zeus]

good one :)

[zeus]

i dont see see any changes here the last two days, ohh I dont hope it stays like this, they have once again filtered whole sites out of the default filter index. So many images is gone and 100% NON naughty pics, I know americans are not allowed to see tit. but pinguins, mountains... ;)

is there any hope that they are still working on the filter be cause now its just pure bad.

[dailypress]

When I do a Google search on site:mydomain.com I can only see my banners on other websites that have linked to me.
When I do a MSN search I only see the images I used on the homepage that has no ALT tags and are not linked anywhere however has the highest resolution.
I think it is because this site is fairly new (7 months old) and only has a PR 4/10 on the homepage and some pages have not yet been indexed and some do not have a PR.

[zeus]

daylypress - have you tried to search without the filter, google filters everything these last weeks time and it dossent matter if you have a site about space or pets.

Its correct, it does take some time before images are in the google index.

Also today I made a few more testes about this filter, a PURE car site is also totally filtered for images with filter on.

[iridiax]

Google will index hotlinked images, even if these images already exist in their image index, and what's worse, this will allow the hotlinking web page to associate any keywords they choose (even adult keywords) with your images. Hotlink protection with .htaccess does not prevent this multiple indexing from happening.

I don't know if this is a malicious way that someone could get your images unfairly filtered, but it's being used by MFA sites to drive Google Image Search traffic to their ad-filled web pages using other people's hotlinked pictures.

[zeus]

iridiax - hmm interesting, I have thought about that, I got a .htaccess in place, but I really dont hope google looks at the links to a image and the text, but google loves links so maybe they do.

I just hate there filter, there is no logic to it and IF some naughty pictures show up here and there, they cant do anything about it, so why not loosen up and show all there other great images there is, which is now filtered.