Can Image Search Ranking Help a Page to Rank?

[vero]

If an image on a page is popular for certain keywords in Google's image search, does that impact the page itself?

Example - If you'd like your page on green widgets to rank for "small green widgets" for example, and an image on that page is doing just that in the image search, would that help the html page to do better for that term too?

[bakedjake]

For that to happen, Google would need to be paying attention to CTR data from image search and taking that into account on the main search side.

I'm not sure if there's a direct relationship from that perspective - a quick few test queries doesn't seem to indicate anything conclusively.

I would think, though, that CTR data from image search could be used as a factor in deciding whether an image search is shown in the main results in a universal box.