Does Google index the <a href= title="."> attribute?

Is it only nice for the visitor, or also for search

[jetteroheller]

In the navigation, place is small and the text of a link is some times very short.

<a href=.... title="About 200 chars long description about the target">Short</a>

[tedster]

I specifically asked this of a Google engineer at New Orleans PubCon -- and he said they were not looking at the title attribute right now because it was too uncommon. This confirmed my own limited testing on the issue.

I mentioned to him that while it might not be common, it might be extremely helpful as a relevance signal for the target page, because those who use it are putting it there for the visitor -- in other words, not in general, trying to game the search results.

He took that input with some interest -- but I still haven't seen any evidence that the algo is using this factor. However, I will continue to use it for the visitors -- especially in spots where descriptive anchor text isn't possible. Who knows, it could come into play at any time.

[Lipik]

On the other hand, the ALT text in the image-tag is very important I think.

[Key_Master]

I'm really surprised that they haven't started to use it.

On the other hand, it would probably be spammed to death. I wouldn't be comfortable with a page full of title text popping up every time I hover over a link.

:)