Image names

Do they actually make a difference?

[shaka1978]

Do search engines actually care what an image is called?

For example, if you're trying to target 'pet food uk' would:

<img src="pet_food_uk.gif" alt="pet food uk">

actually be any better than:

<img src="logo.gif" alt="pet food uk">

Thanks,
Neil

[agerhart]

It is always good to have a few files named after your main keyword.

[conor]

It certainly doesnt hurt any!

...and for the time it takes and indeed the ease of use when you are looking for your image files its worth it, just dont go over the top.

[EliteWeb]

I have mixed feelings about the image naming, on one hand it may offer SE ranking but on the other I find my images often being directly linked to from other peoples sites, how do they find my image? heh images.google.com type in the keyword and wammo. I dont know how dependant the images search is on title of image but somethings happening. I get a page view from people looking then loss of bandwidth from the person linking to my image. At that point I change the image on my server to some raunchy pr0n ;)

[buckworks]

Instead of changing it to something raunchy, why not change it to an ad that says Visit mysite.com? This might be a chance for some free advertising! :)

[Knowles]

Could only imagine opening up my browser to my site and seeing some p0rn show up where the blue widget sign was supposed to be!

I kind of agree with buckworks, by changing it something like visit the REAL blue widgit site as mysite.com would probably be very constructive to you. I would think twice before purchasing some thing from a site that was doing that kind of advertising. I would be more likly to think they where reselling from you so I would go to you.

[web_india]

it's always good to name your files and images according to your keywords

[rogerd]

Image names definitely have a big effect on image search results, perhaps a minimal effect on regular keyword search results. The real question, IMO, is whether you want image-based traffic.

It certainly can lead to your images being stolen more often, and either linked off your server or just copied and reused.

OTOH, it may generate some useful traffic. Google image search always gives the opportunity to open the whole page, and as a searcher I usually do if I find something of interest. If you sell widgets, and someone does an image search on "widget", it stands to reason they might be interested in your product. Sure, they could be a competitor looking for a widget picture to rip off, or they could be a widget collector. Who knows? Personally, I usually give my images logical names related to the content. I may not get a ton of business via image searches, but why not try for that little bit extra?

I had some fun the other day with someone who ripped off an icon from one site, and even linked it from my server. (If you are going to steal an image, don't steal my bandwidth, too!) I noticed that the thief hadn't included height & width attributes, so I replaced the icon-sized image with a page-width graphic noting that this web site steals graphics... They cleaned up their act pretty quickly. ;)

[buckworks]

<<I replaced the icon-sized image with a page-width graphic noting that this web site steals graphics... >>

That one made me laugh out loud, hard enough that my son wanted to see the joke. How to explain ....????

[Chris_R]

hehe - I used to do that on ebay....

you can prevent hotlinking of images with .htaccess

I like image traffic - although my industry might be more image related than most - it has made sales for me.

You can't be afraid of people finding you and stealing your stuff. That is what Search Engines are for.

Personally - I think the alt tag and surrounding text is much more important than the image itself.

But I do sometimes put the keyword in the image.

[idiotgirl]

I found out they sure tend to make a difference for Google's image bot. I found "me" all over the place on Google's image search for tagging images something similar to what the image was actually about. And these pages coincidentally rated high for their targeted search terms, which happened to be the same as some of the image names and alt tags. I concluded that it probably does make a difference. I also banned Google's image bot, and sent them a note of a list of sites to remove from their image engine. They did so very promptly, which I appreciated. So far, with the images out of their image search, the rankings of the sites is unchanged (still high) for Google.

[shaka1978]

Some interesting replies, many thanks for all your time.

[papabaer]

I am a firm believer in keyword image naming. I've been testing this for quite a long while, and for the last 8 months all of my images uses descriptive names.

Hotlinking has not been a major issue, and where it has occured, I've "fixed" it. I love the traffic I get from image searches: nice conversions too! Make everything count, name those images!

[piskie]

I think it is a benefit but if you use more than one word for the file name IMO a dash is a far better seperater than an underscore.