What is SERP and does alt text count as anchor text?

Dummy newbie questions

[heretic]

Sorry for the dummy newbie questions...but I keep seeing SERP and can't quite figure it out.. Search Engine Ranking Page?

Also, does google really ignore alt text for image links like I heard?

Thank you.

[deejay]

SERP = search engine results page - the results of a search in other words.

Can't help with the alt text question, sorry.

[Birdman]

heretic,
Click the "glossary" link at the top. Welcome to "WW". ;)

[korkus2000]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld heretic,

Alt text is part of the html standard. I would include it whether or not Google looks at it or not. I think some weight is given to this text in ranking, but it won't be as high as normal text on the page.

[NovaW]

I could never get a clear answer to the question of does alt text count as anchor text for graphic images. It always gets mixed up with the question does alt text count for on page keywords - i.e plain graphics not links.

I think it does count. I have a site that has only graphic links pointing to it & every one of them has identical alt tags - the alt tag contains the keywords. This site ranks well for those keywords found in the alt text for those links.

[vitaplease]

a couple of months ago I remember doing a back-link check for a reasonably well ranking site, where the only links were graphical with the search query in the alt-tag.

Not 100% sure now, but it makes sense that they would count.

[gmoney]

Last month, I was intrigued by a page that had a top 20 ranking for a very competitive keyword even though the keyword did not appear anywhere on the page. After looking at the back links to the ranking page, I found that there were loads of pages with image links to the page. The alt text for the linking images was the competitive keyword.

Now, after the latest Google update, that same site is ranked 120 or so for the competitive keyword but for a different page that does have the keyword appear on the page. When constraining the Google search for the competitive keyword to that particular site, I found that the page that used to be ranked in the top 20 for all sites isn’t even listed anymore.

It appears that alt text in image links were given noticeable weight before the latest Google update. Now, however, Google doesn’t appear to give too much (if any) weight to alt text in image links this update. However, maybe my example is special since the text does not even appear in the page that the image (with alt text) is linked to.