images.google.com - getting images indexed

[Lemon]

Just a quick question. I see a lot of sites don't want their site's images indexed by Google. I, however, do want my images listed in Google's image index. Currently, I have about 2,000 images on my site, but only about 200 images (mostly old ones) appear in the search results. Any answers on how to get the rest of them in there?

[vincevincevince]

I would be also most interested in knowing about SEO for images.google.com.

[philipp]

I get a large amount of hits to my images via Google (a large amount only in the context of a relatively small hobby site). It helps to analyze your traffic logs and look for images.google.com referrers.

For quite a while now I extended "natural, unabbreviated & verbose" filenames to images as well. E.g. I would use:

albert-einstein.gif

Then, I'd add the title "Albert Einstein" to the image as well, if it's included on an HTML page (as opposed to just being linked to, then of course again I would use "Albert Einstein" in the link text). The "alt"-text can include the keywords as well even though in most cases, that'd be mis-use of its intention (since "Albert Einstein" would probably already be used as header on the page, and thus shouldn't be repeated in the text-flow, e.g. on TTS).

I don't know why, but for example for "armor" my little pic is displayed in the top 5 and I have many people click on that. I don't know if that's good or special or what but I'll describe the context so you can make a guess:
The pic is called "armor.gif". It is not included in an HTML page. The link to the pic is "armor". The PageRank bar for the HTML page seems to be grayed out at the moment. The page doesn't otherwise include the word armor. I don't know if anyone else links directly to the image (e.g. using the word "armor") but I'd suppose nobody does. The picture is relatively big at 544*396 pixels.

[Lemon]

So, any ideas on how to get the images indexed?

[Spica]

I am also very curious about that. My site is mostly images, and has been indexed by Google for almost a year. However, none of our pictures are in the Google images.

[Lemon]

It's becoming painfully obvious to me that the Images indexing is not on the same schedule as the regular index.

Looking at it historically, if you were to look for a common term of today (using GoogleGuy's example from last month of "SARS") there are no relevant images.

Similarly, if you were to look for images in relation to my particular site (ie. gidgets) there is a newly designed gidget available now (images of the new design have been online since at least January) but there are no images of the new design. So does this mean there hasn't been an images update on Google since at least January? And if so, when on earth can we expect the next one?

GoogleGuy? Anyone?

[pageoneresults]

Not sure when they last updated but if you do a search using Google Images, look closely at the results. Pay close attention to file names.

Take that first page of results and look at each image on the actual site. View the source, is there alt text? Are the images linked? Are they using the title attribute on the linked images (<a href="file.htm" title="Picture of Widgets"><img src="widgets.jpg" alt="Picture of Widgets"></a>).

From my research a little over a year ago, image naming is very important.

[Lemon]

Thanks! I agree. I'm trying to change everything now, but want to know when the next image index is so I know what kind of timeline/schedule I'm working against.

[pageoneresults]

Don't know about timelines, but you can obtain more information here...

About Google's Image Search [images.google.com]

How does image search work?
Google analyzes the text on the page adjacent to the image, the image caption and dozens of other factors to determine the image content. Google also uses sophisticated algorithms to remove duplicates and ensure that the highest quality images are presented first in your results.

<added>If you are wondering what the image caption is, you'll find a little more information here...

Getting started with HTML [w3.org]

[takagi]

It's becoming painfully obvious to me that the Images indexing is not on the same schedule as the regular index. ... So does this mean there hasn't been an images update on Google since at least January? And if so, when on earth can we expect the next one?

Google started to index images only 2 years ago (see this thread started on June 22, 2001: Google Image search engine - Now active [webmasterworld.com]) At that moment there were about 150 million images indexed (SearchDay - Google Polishes its Image [searchenginewatch.com]) but according to the 'Wayback Machine' that number increased to 'over 250 million' in July 2001. In October 2001 Google reported a number of 320 million and in December it was 330 million. A year ago it went to 390 million and in January 2003 (google images - how do i submit [webmasterworld.com]) the current 425 million was reached.

Please be aware that it is possible that the number is not changing, but the index did change. Like for indexed web pages the number didn't change since Nov 6, 2002 ( Google - Searching 3,083,324,652 web pages [webmasterworld.com]) but the index was updated several times.

It is my feeling too that the image index is not updated very often. At least it is better than Google's glossary [labs.google.com], which is really out of date.