Alt tag is not indexed by Google?

[venunath]

Hi,

From past few months. I have observe that Google is not indexing the alt tag in the web page.

As SEO point of view Alt tag plays a key role to optimize the images.

Can any one help me out.

[piatkow]

I haven't investigated this but you should have both alt and title attributes on an img tag. Are they both being ignored or do you only have alt attributes on your images?

[Receptional Andy]

I don't see any evidence that alt attributes are not indexed. Indeed, in a quick check I just ran, alt was both retrievable in web search results, and even visible in the snippet.

I don't agree that you need a title attribute for an image, incidentally. It's an optional attribute if you have something extra to add about a particular element.

[venunath]

Hi,

i am using only alt tag.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Though it is a remote possibility however, do check for the syntax of the alt tag. That might be a reason.

[venunath]

Syntax of the alt tag is correct.Any suggestion Plz?

[g1smd]

Not a tag. It's an attribute.

[Receptional Andy]

How are you determining that the text within the alt attribute is not indexed?

It's possible, of course, for a search engine to selectively ignore such text - for supplemental pages, for instance, where storing every detail within a document may be seen as unnecessary.

[Reno]

A few years ago one of my concerns with the alt tag had to do with keyword density (yes, I do realize that is now considered an old concept). In other words, if you had 25 thumbnails and in each alt had something like "blue widget 1", "red widget 1", "green widget 1", "blue widget 2", etc etc, you'd end up with the word "widget 25 times plus whatever other usage for the word was required in the text. I didn't want to be penalized for keyword stuffing, so was kind of hoping that it was mostly being ignored by the algo ... but have no conclusive evidence one way or the other.

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[tedster]

The alt attribute seems to get more algo juice when the image is in an anchor tag.

I also tend to back off repeating "widget" in every widget image on a page. Not sure if it matters now, but it seemed to back around the Florida Update [webmasterworld.com] in 2003 ;)