Image results for Google

[cachemony]

You know sometimes when you search in Google and there will be images of what ever you are searching for at the top of the SERPs. Not an image search, but a regular one. I wanted to find out how Google chooses which images to display and if there are ways I can 'optimize' images on my sites to be displayed.

Thanks

[sufyaaan]

You know sometimes when you search in Google and there will be images of what ever you are searching for at the top of the SERPs. Not an image search, but a regular one. I wanted to find out how Google chooses which images to display and if there are ways I can 'optimize' images on my sites to be displayed.

Thanks
I think it's also algorithmic. Much like extra links with the first site in the SERPs sometimes as is pointed out by Matt Cutts at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/ui-fun-better-snippets/ But I'm not sure. :)

[EGOL]

If they are smart they are promoting the image results that get the most click throughs.

[pk_synths]

They track the clicks. If someone does a search for "africa" for example and Google notices that 40% of the people goto the images search because they are looking for an image instead of a site than it's pretty obvious that search term should get an image result on top of the SERPs because of demand. Also the 2 or 3 images that are displayed I'm pretty sure are the top 2 or 3 most popular images people click on.

[sufyaaan]

G states at http://www.google.com/features.html

You may occasionally see small images at the top of your Google search results. These are images that we think are relevant to your search terms.

[pk_synths]

Correct and I was explaining how they find if an image is relevant for a search term :D

An image wouldn't be relevant if people weren't clicking on "Images" after doing a search but simply choosing a site.

[cachemony]

They track the clicks. If someone does a search for "africa" for example and Google notices that 40% of the people goto the images search because they are looking for an image instead of a site than it's pretty obvious that search term should get an image result on top of the SERPs because of demand. Also the 2 or 3 images that are displayed I'm pretty sure are the top 2 or 3 most popular images people click on.
If I understand you correctly, G displays the images in the SERPs that get the most clicks through a G image search? So then, how do you get your images to rank high in an image search so its more likely people will click on them, which would make it more likely G would put your images at the top of the SERPs and accomplish my goal?

[pk_synths]

1. Enough people have to do image searches for the term to justify the term to have an image appear in the SERPs

2. Of those people enough have to click on 2 or 3 same images whenever they do the searches.

[cachemony]

1. Enough people have to do image searches for the term to justify the term to have an image appear in the SERPs

2. Of those people enough have to click on 2 or 3 same images whenever they do the searches.Thanks for your help. Let me know if I'm annoying you, but do you know how I can get my images to be on that first page of images when people do an image search? How can I optimize my images for a google image search, build links to them??
Thanks again

[gabs]

Have a look at what is #1 and try and work out why..

Look @ the content around the image and on the page along with the alt tag and maybe the anchor's going to the page.. ;)

good luck

[hulkster]

On a related topic, does anyone keep track of the updates in Google Images ... as is done with BL/PR ones. They seem to be on a 3-6 month cycle. I recall they got hammered a bit for no images ot the Iraq prison stuff because people claimed it was censorship - was actually just no updates in a while ... and one of the founders said they would do better in this area (?)