Does anyone know if metadata stored in images is read by search engines?My company stores images in digital asset management systems and metadata keyword tags are added to the images, so they can easily be found within the system. Since these keywords are stored in the image file, I was wondering if search engines can read them once the image is placed on the website, but I'm not finding any evidence of this in my research.

We have a microsite on a subdomain that is kind of a community site that has articles posted to it several times per week. The articles are often relevant to topics covered on the root domain, so links are often included. My question is, are links between the subdomain and root domain considered internal or external? Also, how much of a difference does the location of the links make? For example, if we have a related links menu with links to the root domain is that good enough, or is it that much better to have the links embedded in the article text (toward the beginning of the article)?