My Google images de-indexed by the thousands

[astrobiologist]

Just wondered if anybody could shed light on a mystery. Around Feb 16 images on my site began to drop out of Google image searches. The effect went on for about 3 weeks until now virtually all the images on my site -- in the thousands -- have been deindexed.

The site is 10 years old and I've never had any problems like this before. Is it a penalty of some sort? The only thing I did in the week or two leading up to the problem was to replaced my Vibrant text links with Infolinks. Since then I've pulled the Infolinks and have decided not to go back to any kind of textlinks in the future. Could this have triggered a penalty?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[creeking]

did a "no archive" tag slip in there somewhere?

[astrobiologist]

No, I'd made very few changes to the site itself -- just incrementally adding new pages as I have for years. The only other thing I'd added recently (back in November) was a site map (I know -- it took me long enough).

Like I say, the only thing I'd done just before the issue arose was experiment with Infolinks.