Well, as I posted previously, my clients Real Estate website was dropped from the Google index early in 2008. The site had been hacked and had some blackhat SEO stuff added. I didn't catch it for a month or 2, then spent a couple more fixing and requesting reconsideration with Google. The pages went back into the index, and all was well. The clients site started coming up 1st for searches on "Remerica Somerset Realty". Case closed. Or so I thought.
Then late last year, or early this year, I noted something else. All the images at remericasomersetrealty.com had been dropped from the google image search index. Or at least thats all I can figure. Prior to the hack last spring the images from the site could be found in Google image search.
My assumption is that its not an issue with the Google algorythym, but rather with the Google re-inclusion process. I can't be sure, but when you have a site whose url is remericasomersetrealty.com, and it says "Remerica Somerset Realty" in the page title of the front page, and the upper left corner of every page on the site has an image whose filename is "remerica_somerset_realty.jpg" and the alt tag says "Remerica Somerset Realty" and the text on the actual image says "Remerica Somerset Realty", and the image shows up nowhere in Goggle image search results, but the site still shows up #1 for "Remerica Somerset Realty" in Google standard search, then I'd say that there's a relavency issue with this image search result, especially when you look at the other image search results that come up. And alot of them page 1 are nothing to write home about.
To be fair though, the Google system is extremely huge and dynamic, and everything can't possibly be fixed manually so I don't really fault Google. I just wish I could find a way to get my images back in the Google image search index. There's a process, and I've written them twice in the last 4 months, and been given no timeframe on how fast these requests get considered. :)
