The last few years have seen several advances in image searching and sorting. Google uses image titles and related links to associate images with search keywords and photo sites like Flickr utilize user-generated tags to organize photos. Web sites that offer image searching and sorting should adopt the conventions that these sites have established.
Optimizing for Search
There are a few steps that you can take to optimize images on your site for search. First, give image files intuitive titles. Search engines use images’ titles to associate them with keywords so the titles should reflect the content of the images. If possible, associate tags with images. These tags will prove invaluable for categorizing and sorting images. You might also consider associating additional information with images – size, date, number of times the images has been viewed – because this information might be useful for sorting.
Displaying Results
Image search results should always include thumbnails. A tiled display, consisting of rows of four to six images each, works well if there is not much text associated with the images. Otherwise, a vertical list wherein each result consists of a thumbnail with information on the right-hand side, should suffice. The thumbnail and at least part of the associated text should serve as a hyperlink to the actual image. With regards to sorting, the appropriate attributes vary depending on the type of site and context on the search. Standard attributes include sorting by title, category, date, popularity (ie most viewed), and image size.