So if you verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools, there is an option that says, “Google now offers enhanced search for images contained in your site, including advanced labeling techniques for images hosted by Google”.  You can opt-in to this “enhanced image search” by clicking on a box that say, “I would like to enable enhanced image search on my site and am authorized to opt into this advanced service.”

What does it mean to opt-in to enhanced image search? 

Google answer: If you choose to opt in to enhanced image search, Google may use tools such as Google Image Labeler to associate the images included in your site with labels that will improve indexing and search quality of those images.

Has anybody seen a positive impact come from opting into this?  I can’t see any down side, but if anyone has any experience with it please share…

According to some findings that were announced during the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose on the weekend of August 20th, 15% to 16% of web searches are for images. Therefore, it only makes sense to do everything possible to make images on your website capable of being found by search engine spiders. Because spiders are still fueled by text content, and have not yet evolved to be able to translate actual images, the best we can do is add descriptive keyword-rich ALT tags and image file names.

On top of the realization that so many people are searching for images, search engines are beginning to integrate images in their main results page, making image visibility that much more important. The most popular example of this is Google’s Universal Search. Ask has also been making some significant strides in the integration of multiple media into the web search results.

And that is why SEOs are paying closer attention to Image Search…