GWT Images Indexing

[PremioOscar]

Hi guys!

How does normally take to get Google to index the images within the sitemap?

I recently submitted a new, up to date sitemap and most of the pages have been indexed already, but no images have.

Any reason for that?

Cheers

[DarinPirkey]

Did you submit a separate sitemap just for images (aka Image Sitemap)?

If the images are in your regular sitemap and you don't have a separate image sitemap, make sure that the links in the sitemap are links to the actual image source and not the page that the image is on.

Image Sitemaps Help from Google Webmaster Tools

[PremioOscar]

Images are in the regular sitemap and yes, the links point to the direct source not to the page they are on.

[crackingmedia]

Hi, it can take Google extra time to index images, but I would also suggest you check the following:

1. That you haven't got a line in your robots.txt file that is disallowing indexing of your images folder. I have seen that happen before.
2. That your images are well named, i.e. not just something like "img_1234.jpg".
3. That your images have alt text linked with them on the pages they are used on.

I hope that helps,
Peter

[DarinPirkey]

Can you send a link to one of your images and the page you placed it on.  I'll check out it's metadata and tags to see how Google sees it.  Images in a regular sitemap can take time.  I don't have an exact answer for you.  If the pages that the images are on are indexed, in general, the images should be indexed too.  I prefer to use the image sitemap strategy though.  I then like to add links on Pinterest or other sharing sites to the images to let Google discover them.  Sorry I can't be more exact for you, there are so many factors.

Is your site utilizing Google+,  I've seen some correlation between activity on Google+ and higher percentages of items indexed via WMT.  Not saying its causation but there is a correlation for most of my clients  They will have a >90% index rate for each of their sitemaps (index, images, categories, videos, etc).

[PremioOscar]

http://www.repsole.com/artwork/ProdZoom/pi-server-cabinet-42u-mesh-door-cab42810-svr.jpg

that is the link to the image

http://www.repsole.com/Product/pi-server-cabinet-42u-800mm-1000mm-mesh-door/2491

that's the page

[crackingmedia]

Hi

Just checking your robots.txt file you have this line:

Disallow: /ProductImage.aspx

As your images are served from a query running from: http://www.repsole.com/ProductImage.aspx, e.g. http://www.repsole.com/ProductImage.aspx?File=pi-server-cabinet-42u-mesh-door-cab42810-svr.jpg&Size=200 then I think that is the source of your problem.

Peter

[PremioOscar]

Hello Peter,

I was just looking into it and I do think that's the problem, the question is though, how come the images in the previous sitemap were indexed despite the robots?

[crackingmedia]

If the path to the images has not changed in your code and the robots.txt file has not changed either then I don't have an explanation.

Is it possible that you have changed the way the search engine friendly URLs are created and therefore that has changed the query path to the images?

Ultimately though, if there is no reason to have that disallow in your robots.txt then I would remove it and re-submit a sitemap.

Peter

[PremioOscar]

None of those changes have been done, and unfortunately I can't find out why the previous guy has put the disallow on those files.

I will give a couple of weeks time and see if anything changes, if not I will remove it from the robots!

Thanks for your help!

Oscar