Google Indexing of Images

[Kingalan1]

Our site is experiencing an issue with indexation of images. The site is real estate oriented. It has 238 listings with about 1190 images. The site submits two version (different sizes) of each image to Google, so there are about 2,400 images. Only several hundred are indexed.

Can adding Microdata improve the indexation of the images?

Our site map is submitting images that are on no-index listing pages to Google. As a result more than 2000 images have been submitted but only a few hundred have been indexed. How should the site map deal with images that reside on no-index pages? Do images that are part of pages that are set up as "no-index" need a special "no-index" label or special treatment?

My concern is that so many images that not indexed could be a red flag showing poor quality content to Google.

Is it worth investing in correcting this issue, or will correcting it result in little to no improvement in SEO?

Thanks, Alan

[alphonseha]

I am chiming in a year late but there is just one thing I am not sure I understand. Why would you want to index images on no-index pages? What are these pages that you want to be no-indexed in the first place? If you do not want these pages to be found when searching in Google, why would you want some of the content, like images, be found instead?

I am with Michael and recommend that you fix the sitemap. I am also curious to know what has happened in the past year. Have your issues resolved? Have your SEO improved?

[MichaelC-15022]

I would definitely update that sitemap.  If your sitemap is telling Google one thing, and the pages themselves are contradicting the sitemap, AND it's happening thousands of times--that's a negative quality signal to Google, and could affect all sorts of things, from crawl budget to indexation to rankings.

ALT tags are worth fixing as well.  That's really the #1 clue Google has to what the images are about.  (Other clues:  the image filename, and the page title, if it's the main image on the page).  Here, I'm presuming that the images are ones you hope to have show up in image search results (otherwise why would you bother creating an image sitemap?)...in which case, you really, REALLY need to put the ALT text on them.

[Kingalan1]

Apparently our site map submits images to Google even when they are on pages that are marked as no index.

The result is that only about 250 out of 2250 images are actually indexed by Google. Apparently Google (as you suggested) is not indexing images that are on pages that are marked "no-index".

Do you think it makes sense for my developers to modify the site map so it no longer submits images that are on pages that are marked as no-index?  Is it worth investing resources in fixing this? If this is not going to cause SEO problems I would just as well leave it alone.

Also, the way images are set up, we do not have the ability to customize alt tags. Is this worth fixing? Could repairing these issues with images improve overall ranking?

Thanks, Alan

[MichaelC-15022]

I've not seen instances where Google would index an image that's on a page that's marked noindex.

Be sure that you have consistency between your sitemap and your noindex/index tags on the pages, i.e. don't include a page or image in your sitemap where the page itself (or containing page) indicates noindex.

If you look at how Webmaster Tools OOPS I guess I mean "Search Console" (will Google EVER let a product keep the same name forever???) shows indexation of images in a image sitemap, you'll notice they pair the image indexation count with the web page indexation count.  I take that as an indication that they're not interested in indexing images on noindexed pages (which I have to say makes sense to me).