How many alt tags ?

[mikeD]

How many alt tags would u call spam on a web page designed for google ?

[ciml]

Definitions of spam can be a little controversial, but IMO the answer is just that alt text spam is any more than is required to replace the images for people or machines who can't read them.

As for when Google sees it as spam, either in automatic penalties or human review, that's less easy to say.

<spelling edit>

[edited by: ciml at 2:46 pm (utc) on June 29, 2002]

[mikeD]

yeah cheers ciml, thought the same myself

[MHes]

Hi
Having an alt on a blank gif has got to be spam?

[danny]

What if the ALT text is "This gif intentionally left blank"?

[MHes]

Brilliant example! You're right.

This has got me thinking...

How many spam techniques could in fact be honest content? e.g.
The poem: (from monty python)

Spam Spam Spam
Spam Spam Spam
Spam Spam Spam
Spam Spam Spam
Spam Spam Spam

If this was quoted the spiders would penalise it!

[ciml]

If that Monty Python sketch is not spam, I can't think what it. Any search engine that does not penalise it is faulty. ;)

> What if the ALT text is "This gif intentionally left blank"?

That would be a very bad thing, unless the image actually had those words written across it. alt="" would be appropriate.

If the engines started to penalise sites for 1x1 GIFs with alt="SPACER GIF 0.12kb" then some major sites might be prompted to improve.

[Robert Charlton]

>>Spam Spam Spam

If this was quoted the spiders would penalise it!<<

Makes me wonder... would they just penalize for searches on the word "spam," or would they demote you across the board?

[MHes]

Hi

Further thoughts...slightly off topic but....

If you had a poetry site and as with the "spam" example the poems quoted repeated phrases over and over again in each verse... you could get hammered!

Is google thus becoming a 'cultural editor'? It would only promote poetry that did not repeat a phrase too many times.

[victor]

If repeating the word spam was itself spam, then how come www.spam.com get a pageRank of 8!? :)

[MHes]

Hi
If you look at the spam.com site the word is often a graphic, making the actual word count less than you would think.
However....
I believe that Google is paying less attention to keyword density so perhaps this is less of an issue than it once was. But the conflict between rules set by google and a site whose relevant content cannot avoid triggering a penalty filter is an interesting one.
I have a site I want to optimise for "IT Jobs" which is a common search phrase. But "IT" is ignored..... how do I get around that?

[Marcia]

Images with no alt text trigger an error with validation, so even spacer gifs should have them unless there are a huge number of them.

Some wysiwyg programs put in a transparent gif for every single space, but I wouldn't worry about alt text on those, they most likely can't validate anyway.

[victor]

Mhes:
I have a site I want to optimise for "IT Jobs" which is a common search phrase. But "IT" is ignored..... how do I get around that?

I don't think there is much you can do about that. But people searching can look for:

"it jobs"

rather than:

it jobs

and Google will find the phrase, even though it got a stop word in it.

[Marcia]

MHes, if you want to ask another question about a different topic, you'd be better off starting another thread, you'll get more input that way. Your keyword question can go in the Keyword Discussion [webmasterworld.com] forum.

>What if the ALT text is "This gif intentionally left blank"?

If having too many is an issue, I'd also watch for total file size with the HTML Probably "spacer" is universally known enough to do the trick and serves a usability purpose. Even with "gif", or better yet what ciml suggested, " ", size-wise.

What could be looked for is using transparent 1x1 gifs to hide links like people were doing a while back. If I personally even thought of doing that, which I wouldn't, I'd have a second domain ready and waiting to start over with.

[Brett_Tabke]

>What if the ALT text is "This gif intentionally left blank"?

Wasn't that the default in some html wysiwyg program?

[ciml]

I don't think the word spam gets a penalty. I'd expect the poetry site to be OK; Google don't like spam sites, but within-page repetitions don't seem to do any particular harm or good as far as Google's concerned.

My "spam spam spam" comment wasn't meant to be taken seriously, sorry for any confusion it caused.