Hi, Rob,

I actually get some images being indexed. Actually, I saw a few visits yesterday. Not as many as I used to as probably a year ago I was getting a whole lot more traffic from image searches and that took a big dive. Now I see a trickle now and again. But some images ARE indexed. I'm not saying that you are not right, of course, I'm just saying that at least some images here and there get indexed. I will try to put examples here when I notice them again. Yesterday I didn't pay much attention and I don't have the records any more. Maybe if I get an example that will help, although I doubt it has anything to do with the way I do things as I tend to do everything the wrong way or at least the least efficient way possible, owing to my lack of expertise in all this.

I'll be on the lookout for image results where the images are loaded to my site. Sorry if all of this is no help or a waste of time…please ignore it if so.

Edit: I'm looking for some examples from memory by search terms I remember and my site name. One thing, right off the bat, is that when I type in a search term and "gustrength", my site, I get tons of image results from other sites that use the images from the site or promote something from my site, etc and very few from my actual site. I would think, for sure, the proportion should go the other way. Anyway, here is one page where an image is indexed:

http://www.gustrength.com/anuj-training:the-functional-big-three

But here is the thing. It just so happens that the person who made that page, used photobucket for all the images, and they are all being served from there. As such:

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j225/anuj247/GUStrength%20Articles/Deadlift500.jpg

Here is something that is very telling. One of the main images on my site that should definitely be indexed is my mock eBook cover. The alt attribute from the cover image has "free eBook, Ground Up Strength, Eric Troy" etc. in it. A search for those terms, with "ground up strength" in quotes, does NOT turn up my site here at all, but instead references the image from my outside wordpress blog. Even though the image has been displayed on my wikidot site for much much longer.

This is the scenario I'm getting across the board. I haven't done enough to really know yet. Most of my images have alt tags and I always name the images with understandable names, etc. Basically, I do most all the things you are supposed to do to help get images indexed. I do know that images from wikidot, at least my site, do get indexed. And I do know that the number of images that are indexed from my site has dropped, but that could be meaningless and up to the vagaries of the engines.

Hopefully this search result link will work:

https://www.google.com/search?q=ground+up+strength+free+eBook+Eric+Troy&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=al-lT5PyAcml6gGt0JnFBA&biw=1024&bih=556&sei=bV-lT__HCaqJ6QGF9NC2BA#um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=gustrength+free+eBook+Eric+Troy&oq=gustrength+free+eBook+Eric+Troy&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_l=img.12...44589.48173.0.50275.17.14.3.0.0.7.232.1934.0j13j1.14.0...0.0.BbSQQ-ufXeA&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=d7080b32fbee508d&biw=1024&bih=556

This is very telling. Most of those images are also loaded onto pages on my site. And most of them were loaded to my site here first. Yet google is mostly indexing only the wordpress results, over the wikidot results. If I change the search terms a bit I can get a few images that are loaded onto pages…but again, they are being served from photobucket.

Another thing, most of those image results from wordpress have file names and alt tags that are different from the search terms I entered in. I entered in the search terms, like I said above, specifically to match the terms I used for the eBook image on my wikidot site. And yet I still got everything but my wikidot site.

Seems to be the case that it's the images that are loaded to wikidot that are not being indexed. Images that are served from somewhere else, like photbucket, are being indexed. Also, I've had some instances of image results coming to my site when the images aren't even displayed, but only a link to the image is posted in the forum.

I did some more searching. All those images that I told you about, the once being served from photobucket are all indexed except for one, and they all point back to my site. Clearly, images that are loaded as files on my wikidot site are not being indexed at all but other images, that are served from elsewhere, are. By the way, that is 6 out of 7 images I found on a google search, from that single page, all using photobucket. I can find no other images from my site, whatsoever, except those that served from elsewhere.

Thanks, we will look into this. Indeed, Google does not eagerly index images hosted on Wikidot itself.

For gustrength.com I can see only a few images indexed, none of them are attached to pages as I can see.

Yes, Sir, Michal. All of those images, at quick glance, are just links in my forum to images; those images are not even displayed on the site.

I think there might be a simple solution to this. Let us work on it.

We have just done 2 things that will most likely fix the situation:

1. We have simplified robots.txt for wdfiles.com — the domain we serve all images from
2. We have removed unnecessary redirects when serving images and files on public sites

Robots.txt is already updated on all sites, however the redirects fix will need a page to be recompiled, which we expect will eventually happen during normal use.

We will keep this issue open until we can see a significant improvement in image index ability.

Thanks for reporting this one!

however the redirects fix will need a page to be recompiled

Can you explain what this means? Do we have to recompile every page that has an image or just some random page on our site?

Thanks, Michal. I'll start keeping tags as well.

Google webmaster tools under "blocked urls" actually gives me this:

Saying that "google tried to crawl these urls in the last 90 days but was blocked by robots.txt."

I've seen this before but I do not know if it is significant. I certainly do not know how I could have blocked so many urls and I don't have that man "noindex" pages..but this could be some thing that is normal and I don't understand about. As far as general indexing about 81% of my "submitted" pages are indexed, according to Google webmaster…so that's okay!

Just thought I would mention that robots.txt thing..it may be meaningless.

@Ed

I do not think you should recompile anything to help indexing. I think the major improvement is the robots.txt fix. Robots.txt was unnecessarily blocking access to attached files. I can already see a few files being indexed by Google, so there is an improvement.

Michal, noticed a visit from an image search and I'm seeing some new images being indexed. Two older ones (one is the site logo) and a new one I just added.

Edit: Make that 4 new images.