Is it important to include image files in your sitemap?

[IceIcebaby]

I run an ecommerce business that has over 4000 product pages which, as you can imagine, branches off into thousands of image files. Is it necessary to include those in my sitemap for faster indexing?

Thanks for you help!

-Reed

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi,

It isn't necessary, but if you really want to ensure that every image is indexed by Google, then it will be beneficial to do this otherwise you might not have them all discovered simply by crawling.

-Andy

[IceIcebaby]

Thanks Andy,

Would it be best to have all the img alt tags set up before adding site-map?

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Yes, this will help Google when crawling them as it will give them additional info.

-Andy

[gfiorelli1]

I'd add one condition:

we do really want our images to rank in Google Images? Maybe we don't want that, especially since Google Images is not anymore that great source of traffic it was before its layout changed (we can see photos directly inside Google without clicking the "see the page" link). If it is so, I would prioritizes the image sitemaps.

But if you want your images indexed, picked up (and hotlinked) by other site or directly stolen but with you being able to find who used them without credit, then the image sitemap is needed:

here an example directly by Google: http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1/sitemap-image.xsd.

I don't know what CMS are you using, but if it WordPress, the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin automatically generates the image sitemaps.

[IceIcebaby]

Thanks Gianluca, very helpful.