title attribute in text link anchor

[SEOViking]

I'm putting together a list of search engine optimization tips and one of the last things I'm having trouble finding concrete info on is does Google account for title attribute in a text link anchor? Is there any evidence of this (I've read enough opinions)? Otherwise I'm going to give the following examples on my SEO list og things to remember:

<a href="page.html" title="Page Title">Page Title</a>'s Alertbox for January 11, 1998
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-xhtml2-20040722/mod-core.html)

...some text...
Here's a photo of
<A href="http://example.com/stuff.gif" title="Me scuba diving">
me scuba diving last summer
</A>
...some more text...
(http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#adef-title)

[edited by: BlobFisk at 11:01 am (utc) on Dec. 13, 2004]
[edit reason] Examplified post [/edit]

[tedster]

Including a title attribute is often a good practice, especially given the tool-tip it generates. But as far as I have ever discovered, there is no SEO value.

I tested several times earlier this year with unique strings in the title attribute - and a search does NOT show either the page itself or the target page in the results (which are usually no results at all, given the uniqueness of the string.) This is after the page shows in the G cache.

[SEOViking]

thanks tedster. i was just thinking of running the same test. good point. alt tekst shows up in the text-only google cache but title doesn't.

[mifi601]

not showing up in the cache does not necessarily mean it's not in the algo though ...

[SEOViking]

no, you're right but i thought about the message that google sends when only links that contain the search text point to a page. there's nothing like that for the title attribute of an anchor text link. plus if tedster's experiment was in fact what he says it was then that should be a good indicator that it is not taken account of. but you're right that just because something isn't in the cached text doesn't mean it isn't in the algo..i should have included that disclaimer in my comment :)