For my vb+vbseo forums I get lots of Traffic from Google Images, I don't have a gallery module, Just Images posted in Threads and Posts. On the other hand hardly any Image shows up in Google Images for my 4 month old ipb forum.I have checked few other ipb forums with same results. Including: IPB Google Images Results The believe the way IPB show images in-line in posts is not search engine friendly. Compare the actual page (2nd Post) IPS Office Photos - Invision Power Services with cache page in Google IPS Office Photos - Invision Power Services The <img> tags disappeared in the cached page and the link shows up as text, So will be indexed as text not as an Image. Is this an issue ?
Although this is a bit off-topic... but: how have you enabled search engines to crawl and index your images/attachments? My forum has TONS of attached images, but they never appear in Google Search results. Have you done anything special or made any tweaks to get them indexed?
Haven't done anything special but I guess keyword in filename helps a lot (ex. keyword.jpg) Thanks to vbseo.
Upload the images to somewhere like photobucket - rename them to targeted keywords, and watermark with your website logo. In my opinion - the single most important thing you do for pictures you take is to watermark them with your website logo. When people hotlink to your images, you still get credit.
This is how the images posted in IPB Posts show up for search engines. I guess It will be indexed as text not as Image. keyword, watermark won't matter.