See the product page here:

http://www.symbiostock.com/products-page/upgrades-and-plugins/symbiostock-image-sitemap/

This gives you a new option in the ladybug menu

This gives you very useful sitemap, which notifies Google of your image previews, their license, title, and content. The image sitemap will help images to rank better. Usually Google must rank an image based on what it sees in the page - which can vary based on the page's content and how the webmaster lays it out. This however takes away that guessing game, and serves the info in a perfectly machine-understood form.

Here is a sampling (for those who are curious) how the info is given to Google:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1">
  <url>
    <loc>http://localhost/symbiostock/image/glossy-blue-robot-presenting-idea/</loc>
    <image:image>
      <image:loc>http://localhost/symbiostock/wp-content/uploads/symbiostock_rf_content/4185-glossy-blue-robot-presenting-idea.jpg</image:loc>
      <image:title><![CDATA[Glossy Blue Robot Presenting Idea]]></image:title>
      <image:caption><![CDATA[A bright white and blue robot presenting an idea in an attractive manner.]]></image:caption>
      <image:license>http://localhost/symbiostock/end-user-license-agreement/</image:license>
    </image:image>
  </url>

Its perfectly valid and recognized, as its a schema developed by Google.

You can apply it to all your sites 

BTW I should mention support and upgrades are free as always.

how well does it play with Yoest's sitemaps?

Yes, it plays nice with YOAST. YOAST does everything else. This sitemap takes care of the unique need of your stock images.

It gives search engines this specific information:

• The specific location of ALL your stock image files in one run.
• The license (YOAST cannot do that)
• The location of your preview images (YOAST does not know where these are)
• The title and content relating to those images (Google doesn't have to guess now).

So lets say you have a page loaded with stuff - widgets, your author bio, related images, latest images, etc. The image page is already built in such a way to keep the guessing game low for the search engine. This rules out any issues of  confusion or diluting of your SEO due to "noise" that may exist in the page due to people's different page layouts and needs.
Other benefits:

• Its very possible that since this is a google designed sitemap that google images will consider every element within it and rank you accordingly.
• Faster indexing. Google does not have to crawl your site to find everything and guess its context/use/license etc.

To set it up you simply upload it as a plugin and you will see the option appear for the sitemap in your ladybug menu. Simply follow the instructions from there.

The reason why I made this plugin is because its actually an important need - and one of the few that YOAST cannot address completely.

great plugin -- a few glitches though - first 2 are just documentation:

--------------------
'visit plugin site' link sends to symbiostock.com but no mention there of the plugin

 
------------------------------------------
'submit to google' is confusing - it takes you to the page that TELLS you how to submit but doesnt actually do anything

-----------------------------------------------
when submitting, i tested the sitemap and got

>>>>>>>
This is not a valid URL. Please correct it and resubmit.
 
Parent tag: image
Tag: loc

line: 14300

<<<<<<<

here's the image that caused the error  (on the image:loc line)
 <url>
    <loc>http://cascoly-images.com/pix/image/fresh-vegetable-stalls-2/</loc>
    <image:image>
      <image:loc></image:loc>
      <image:title><![CDATA[Fresh vegetable stalls]]></image:title>
      <image:caption><![CDATA[Fresh vegetable stalls,    Pike Place Market   Seattle   Pacific Northwest
]]></image:caption>
      <image:license>http://cascoly-images.com/pix/end-user-license-agreement/</image:license>
    </image:image>
  </url>
   
------------------
i  took out the bad line and then got an error in a caption line elsewhere; i dont remember if google processes the rest of the sitemap when it finds an error

It might be as simple as a whitespace stripping. Thanks for letting me know. If anyone else sees any errors let me know. It should be very rare.

Don't take it out of the zip Just upload the zip.

Just a note to everyone. Keep your transaction ID's. I'll be putting out one more version that receives auto-updates soon.

Nope! Thats perfectly fine. My problem.

Whats your site again? I can check out your sitemap and make the correction to the plugin.

It appears the preview is missing for those -- which is actually a legit error from the site. If the value is empty I should put something generic in there.

Awesome images btw! Racoon dog? http://shaunwstock.com/image/racoon-dog/ Wow, didn't know they existed!

Heres the source pages:

http://shaunwstock.com/image/large-panoram-of-lincolnshire-field-with-rain-clouds-2/

http://shaunwstock.com/image/sheep-grazing-on-hill/

http://shaunwstock.com/image/many-of-blue-moon-jelly-fish/

If you don't mind waiting, I'm working on some more memory efficient stuff to handle large images, which is apparently what these were. Don't delete them! Simply reprocess them when I put out a new update.

  <url>
    <loc>http://shaunwstock.com/image/large-panoram-of-lincolnshire-field-with-rain-clouds-2/</loc>
    <image:image>
      <image:loc></image:loc>
      <image:title><![CDATA[Large panorama of lincolnshire field with rain clouds]]></image:title>
      <image:caption><![CDATA[Large panoram of lincolnshire field with rain clouds in distancs]]></image:caption>
      <image:license>http://shaunwstock.com/end-user-license-agreement/</image:license>
    </image:image>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://shaunwstock.com/image/sheep-grazing-on-hill/</loc>
    <image:image>
      <image:loc></image:loc>
      <image:title><![CDATA[Sheep Grazing on hill]]></image:title>
      <image:caption><![CDATA[Sheep grazing on grass on a hill]]></image:caption>
      <image:license>http://shaunwstock.com/end-user-license-agreement/</image:license>
    </image:image>
  </url>
  <url>
    <loc>http://shaunwstock.com/image/many-of-blue-moon-jelly-fish/</loc>
    <image:image>
      <image:loc></image:loc>
      <image:title><![CDATA[many of blue moon jelly fish]]></image:title>
      <image:caption><![CDATA[many of blue moon jelly fish swimming]]></image:caption>
      <image:license>http://shaunwstock.com/end-user-license-agreement/</image:license>
    </image:image>
  </url>

If you want. Until I find the golden means for crunching giant images on limited memory, we'll just have to adapt.

If you want. Until I find the golden means for crunching giant images on limited memory, we'll just have to adapt.

sounds like same problem I saw -- when a field is empty just need to put something there so google doesn't object

hi Leo, can this plugin auto detect my content description and apply it to meta description? I am using Yoast seo now, but I have to manually copy my text from content to my meta description.