Google Image Search results changed.

Google's image search results look rather like the web search results

[fred9989]

After showing the same results for weeks, Google image search has suddenly presented a different set of images for several of my test queries. And, loh and behold, they reflect the results of a normal web search for the same search terms, in that the images at the top of the image query results are - at least in part - derived from the domains at the top of the web search.
I wonder if this indicates that Google sees their current results as the outcome of some kind of process that is now finished?
Rod

[Andem]

I noticed the same thing today after doing some test searches for brand names and some phrases I've seen recently in stats. I'm not sure that its related to the search results, but it would make sense.

[texasville]

hmmmm. I wish that they were doing this. They treat my images like kings but not so much my site.

[zeus]

I noticed the change about 3 days ago and today on more servers and I think it looks good this time.

[whats up skip]

I find it very difficult to follow the logic behind Google image search.

For one search phrase a picture from our site shows up on the first page in Google images, but the image is not what the topic is about it is third image on the page, but it is the largest image on the page.

This image also did not contain the search term in its "alt".

All I can conclude is that Google looks for the largest image on the page and uses the content from the page as a guide to the indexing.

One other thing that I noticed is that many of the top images were large images, not the thumbnails or small images.