Will Property Title help to Improve Image Ranking?

Improve image ranking

[newsphinx]

Would like to know if anybody have ever tested adding a keyword title for a JPEG image will improve the its search rankings in search engines.

[krieves]

I've always heard that use of alt tags on images help search rankings only if they are relevent to page. For instance, the web page is about dogs and you have an image that has an alt tag of "this dog is a beagle", the page may be scored a little higher. Maybe. :)

[smokeyb]

Is that actually true? Would love to know for sure.
Smokey

[TimmyMagic]

I don't think you'll ever know for sure as the SE's don't like to reveal their algorithms. At the end of the day it doesn't take long to put alt tags in and if it helps then great. I shouldn't think it makes much difference, but i'd be inclinded to put them in anyway.

[Saltminer]

The alt text is only indexed if the image is a link. You can easily test this for yourself.

Pick two images, one that is used as a link to another page, and one that is just an image. Pick two phrases that would be rare in a search, just meaningless garbage. Use one phrase like "Red Moose Antlers" in the alt that is a linked image, and another phrase like "Blue Moose Antlers" in the alt text for the unlinked image. Wait a few weeks for it to be indexed, then do a search using quote marks around the phrase.
You'll find that "Red Moose Antlers" will be indexed since it relates to a link, "Blue Moose Antlers" will not show up in a phrase search, the SE's just seem to ignore it completely.

[webboy1]

I guess that SE's aside, ALT text should always be added simply for accesibility reasons. ALT is needed on all images on your page if it is to be either HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0 valid.

We have never tested to see if it improves rankings, however, i have read about cases where over loading the ALT text with irrelavant words can be classed as Spamming.

So i guess they do look at them - but how much relevance they give to "good" alt text i do not know.

Nice one about links/images/alt text ..... i never knew that! Cool!

Webboy

[charlienichols]

Righto Timmy,

As a highly competitive space right now, SE's are using PhD's to work on their algos... I'm sure things like linked images with relevant alts help, but maybe it's just a few points on a large scale.

I"ve always envisioned a nested percentage weighting scheme that changes balances of each of the elements SE's measure... probaby down to the hundreth or thousand decimal place.

So it would be really difficult to measure or even speak about. The point is, they all want to index good, unique relevant content... build your pages with that in mind, don't try to cheat and you'll list well.

my 2cents... 8-)

Charlie