ALT TAG keyword on images not highlighted...

...when you turn of show picture on browser !

[yoo_daa]

Hi to u all, and thx for contributing making this to a GREAT forum. I'm pretty new in the game, about 6 months and I'm doing ok with my optimization, I have a lot of fun doing it ;)

It’s said in this forum (and others places) that putting a keyword on the ALT TAG (example. <IMG SRC="../gfx/picture.jpg" WIDTH=326 HEIGHT=60 ALT="keyword">) on images is god for rankings.

I was wondering, why the keyword isn't highlighted in the cached version, when you turn off "show image" on your browser.

a) Is it because the spider can’t index the keyword? If so, how can it have any importance?

b) It is indexed but it doesn’t show. Then how can you know?

Maybe this is obvious for you all but I wont be able to sleep before I get an answer to this question :))

/z

[kaled]

To answer this you need to think through what is going on. All Google does is highlight search terms in the visible text by adding extra tags. Take a look at the source code of a cached page. The text in the ALT attribute is NOT visible text. Browsers may display it by various means (tooltip, etc.) but it is not part of the normal page text. Even if Google wanted to, there would be no way to highlight this.

Kaled.

[Janet]

ALT tags have pretty low impact on rankings in today's modern search engines. In google's case the ALT tag is ignored. Google is much more interested in what other sites say about you (link text), than what you say about yourself (your own content)

[WebWalla]

They may have a low impact, but Google doesn't ignore the image ALT tag if the image forms part of a link. It DOES ignore it if there is no link.

[yoo_daa]

Kaled:
..got your point.....you could wish though, that they could do something like this…
“If user have show picture=off on browser then highlight the keyword instead of showing picture”....as a service to us so that we know for sure that it have some importance...;)

PS...now having in mind, that ALT=”keyword” isn’t in the content(normal) text …

Janet,WebWalla:

I know that this is only a detail in the Big Picture, boosting results on the SERPS, just thought I tumbled over something particular….. but do we know for sure it have some influence…?

Thx for your answers…

/z

[WebWalla]

Google includes pages in the SERPs which include searched-for text in image ALT tags when the image forms part of the link. It will NOT include pages with such text when there is no link. Therefore, yes, we know for sure there is some influence.

[GoogleGuy]

Greets, yoo_daa, and welcome to WebmasterWorld. Alt tags do have some weight, but in the same sense that meta tags and things like text in the <noframes> section of a web page aren't usually seen by the user, you can imagine that they don't get as much weight. I'd recommend having the keyword there, but I'd try to keep it usable for blind people or people surfing with pictures off. It's not really going to help you in Google to repeat some keyword 9-10 times in an alt tag, but it can annoy your users if they notice.

[yoo_daa]

ok, thx...:))