They are for the most part cached and displayed. If you have any doubts look at the cached page of your website.

I think you need to look at the cached page of your website.  Look at the source of the page thats cached.  Specifically look at the src attribute of the images on the page.  You'll see that the images aren't cached at all - they are linked to the exact location where they exist on your own site.  Its just like someone had hotlinked the images from another site - thats why if you have your hotlink protection set up in a certain way that you'll see red Xs instead of images in google's cache of your page.

What is cached is the thumbnail of your image that appears in the image search results.

I assure you that the image filename and alt text makes no difference that you can measure, if you're trying to get a number one placement for an image search.  I've got first page image placements for hundreds of keywords and phrases and far to many of the results have filenames like "post-9-123764537.jpg" and alt text like "attached image" for the alt text and filename to make any difference at all.

Let me tell you a story about how I originally came to the conclusion that filename and alt text don't make a lick of difference in ranking on google image search.  If you've heard me post this story before you can quit reading.

Almost three years ago someone told me that if you did google image search for "The Wretched Spawn" that there were no results.  I checked it out and sure enough there were no results.  Naturally since that phrase is a phrase I'm interested in ( its the name of an album ), I decided I would see what I could do to get an image ranked number one for that phrase.  I did all the things that would come to mind, I put images of the album cover all over my site with filenames like "The-Wretched-Spawn.jpg" and alt="The Wretched Spawn Album Art" etc..  Literally on thousands of pages.  I set my hotlinking up so that I could link the image from other sites, I tried different variations of alt text on some pages, and different alt text on others.  I put the keywords in meta description on pages, I used the title and h1 tags, anyway I created pages and checked google's image cache daily for months untill one day for the first time there were image results.  There was an image from my site at the bottom of the first page but I was surprised to see that it was not the image that I had so carefully named and linked so creatively.  It was a picture of me !!

If I make the same search today, I see that I have several results on the first page.  In fact I've got the #5 and #6 ranking image.  But both images have a filename like post-9-xxxxxxx.jpg and the one that has relevant alt text ranks behind the one with alt text of "The Contents" ! 

If you look at how the resulting images are organized, you'll see that the pages that they come from rank in the exact same order as the pages from regular google search.

.htaccess is a much easier and more relevant way to black image access

Strangely, the alt text in the image tag and the filename of the image don't make a single a bit of difference at all.  I know that goes against the conventional wisdom, but its true.  If you really want to optimize your images for search, it won't hurt to give them alt text and a choice filename, but whats more important - really the only thing thats important is the words around the image.

, This is something  I've known / suspected for a long time now.  Another indexing factor is the words that are used to link to the images (IMO).

HAve ya'll heard about what google is doing on the image searching front?  That whole image labeling thing, preformed by humans?
Read about it / participate at : Google image labeling, basiclly it's a volunteer image tagging effort.  It's a step in the right direction but still has a way to go in my opion.  Should I start a new topic about it?

EDIT:  You can use google webmaster tools to opt-n your site to have it's photos labeled by humans

.htaccess is a much easier and more relevant way to black image access

- tell us more please.

Won't using .htaccess block everyone seeing the images?

texxs wrote:

.htaccess is a much easier and more relevant way to black image access

- tell us more please.

Won't using .htaccess block everyone seeing the images?

no - search for 'hot linking' - basically means that when an image is called by it's self, and not part of a page, it won't be displayed

prevent hotlinking htaccess

texxs wrote:

Won't using .htaccess block everyone seeing the images?

You can block domains other than your own or certain domains only.

Give this page a look:

http://altlab.com/htaccess_tutorial.html

Stopping hotlinking won't help images searches, (it's still a good idea to enable it though!), because they do display a copy of the page the image is on. Example


As for blocking domains, would you block I guess you would block images.google.com for example, but some of their searches come from thier IP addy.  I quess that would prevent them for showing in their image search results.  Pretty clever!

I still feel it's the only valid strategy is to let SE's index theumbnails and meduium sized, watermarked preview images (and the public see them), and keep the full sized images password protected to accessed only after payment.  It's really the only way to go.  Otherwise, most people won't pay, why would they, honesty?  This is America . . .

Think about the way google caches your image - it calls it directly!

That means the hot link protection should work.

Google won't be given the image, so won't display it in the image results section, there will be no result for a link to go to

Remember - google will not spider your image directory unless you explicitly link to each image you have!

Google image serach is based on the image's context.

If you really don't want SEs looking at your images you use css to create a div to have the same dimensions as your image and then apply the image as a background image. this way there are no img tags for SEs to see

ahhhhhh, i get it - if it can't recieve the image to thumbnail, it won't make a entry for the SERPS.

This is very clever too:

If you really don't want SEs looking at your images you use css to create a div to have the same dimensions as your image and then apply the image as a background image. this way there are no img tags for SEs to see

Won't help with image theft (other than fewer people will see it because it's not in the SE's), but a clever fix to the narrow goal of SE's

issue is this - once it's on the internet there is nothing you can do to stop anyone taking it

the css method hides the location of the image, so one can only get it by pressing print screen

by doing the css method twice you can put a watermark on it

you can copyright your images and prosecute copyright theft. [UK copyright law is great - as soon as the material takes physical form it's copyrighted (including data on a hard drive as the physical properties of the hard drive have been changed)]

final remark - if you don't want it copied - don't put it on the web! - pretty simple!

UK copyright law is great - as soon as the material takes physical form it's copyrighted (including data on a hard drive as the physical properties of the hard drive have been changed

That's pretty much how it works here too.  You can register a copyrioght, but it costs a lot of money and all it does for you is establish a (somewhat inaccurate) date of creation.

Mutilated1 wrote:

They are for the most part cached and displayed. If you have any doubts look at the cached page of your website.

What is cached is the thumbnail of your image that appears in the image search results.

THAT'S WHAT I'VE BEEN SAYING!! Sorry for not being more specific!!!!
Dan