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After switching to a CDN I noticed that my indexed image count went down. I have close to 1000 images on the site with correct tags, alt tags, and all of that. Only 50 are actually being indexed in the organic search.

It's a WordPress site with Yoast SEO plugin, using Maxcdn as my CDN.

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Moving images to a CDN is similar to migrating the URLs of other content.

  • Use a subdomain of your main domain (images.example.com), don't use the CDN domain name (893.mebes.bigbadcdnhost.tld)
  • Use 301 permanent redirect (www.example.com/images/foo.jpg to images.example.com/images/foo.jpg)
  • Update your site so that you refer to the images at their new URLs everywhere on your site.
  • Ensure that your images are crawlable on the CDN (not blocked by robots.txt)

I helped move images to a CDN a few years ago. With those rules in place, we didn't lose any image search rankings.

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    +1 this. @user32160 Also since your using Maxcdn, they have a robots.txt feature to block content. In your case you do not want that enabled.
    – Anthony Hatzopoulos
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 19:44
  • Good point, Anthony, I've added that to my answer.
    – Stephen Ostermiller ♦
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 19:45

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