How Google indexes website images

[Sue Dyer]

This query isn't for my cottage website but I though one of you techies might be able to offer advice.
I run a site for a musician friend of mine. When I put his name into google and press the images search none of the photos from my site come up. A friend told me I need the name in alt tags, I thought I'd done this (I use Front Page) but after months of checking still no joy.
Is there a way to get google to pick up your images or are you just at the mercy of the way they list?
many thanks!

[paolo]

Sue,

I'm no techie but there is a thread on this at the excellent highrankings forum here.

As you will see, there is not too much certainty about how Google indexes images, but there are tips worth trying. The consensus is that it can take a long time to get your images indexed because this is done by a different, less frequent bot.

Also, this is what Google itself has to say about it:

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.

By the way I am sure you know this but to see if you have written the alt tag correctly you just hover your cursor over the image and see what comes up.

[altyfc]

I would imagine the picture file name (ie. thisbit.jpg) is also a factor.

Aaron