Google not indexing images

[Adriaan.Multiply]

Hi there,

We have a strange issue at a client website (www.rubbermagazijn.nl). Webpage are indexed by Google but images are not, and have never been since the site went live in '12 (We recently started SEO work on this client). Similar sites like www.damenrubber.nl are being indexed correctly.

• We have correct robots and sitemap setup and directions.
• Fetch as google (Search Console) shows all images displayed correctly (despite scripted mouseover on the page)
• Client doesn't use CDN
• Search console shows 2k images indexed (out of 18k+) but a site:rubbermagazijn.nl query shows a couple of images from PDF files and some of the thumbnails, but no productimages or category images from homepage. (product page example: http://www.rubbermagazijn.nl/collectie/slangen/olie-benzineslangen/7703_zwart_nbr-oliebestendig-6mm-l-1000mm.html)
• We've changed the filenames from non-descriptive names to descriptive names, without any result.
• Descriptive alt texts were added

We're at a loss. Has anyone encountered a similar issue before, and do you have any advice? I'd be happy to provide more information if needed.

CBqqw

[Brian-T]

I was stumped until I noticed the mega menu. In my experience, google will only index so many images on a page before it completely ignores anything beyond that magical number. Their main page pulls 249 requests and I'm willing to bet the majority of those are the images within that menu. You'll notice the only non-pdf image in google index right now is the page's header logo which is the only image loaded before the menu.

I used to have multiple massive gallery pages on my site and google wasn't indexing hardly a single image from those. Then I was tinkering with my mega menu that had about 40 images in it. I removed them to see if I could increase page load times and poof, google started indexing more images on those gallery pages. All of them? No way. But quite a bit more.

The huge image menu is where my money is at. Remove those, fetch/render/submit, and you'll probably know by tomorrow.

[Adriaan.Multiply]

Thanks Brian, this sounds plausible! I'll definitely pass this through.