Search Engines

Does text embedded in graphics count?

[joe commerce]

I have some text content created by a graphic software. Are these words picked up by SE's?

Thanks

[mack]

The image will be no more than an image. Currently search engines can't read text within an image.

Mack.

[Essex_boy]

just out of interest, why have you done this?

[joe commerce]

Text in a jpeg. Just wondering if SE's pick it up.

[gudrunj]

No, they do not pick it up. You could try adding an alt tag if it isn't too disturbing. That will be picked up by search engines.

[txbakers]

There are lots of reasons to use text in an image - your design calls for a particular font for example.

There is nothing wrong with using text in an image, just remember that it's slower to load and the SE won't read it (unless it's in an alt).

[longen]

Couldn’t SE's not carry out OCR on an .jpg image?

[mack]

Google catalogues uses OCR technology, not sure if it will ever become part of web search.

Mack.

[stapel]

longen wrote:

Couldn’t SE's not carry out OCR on an .jpg image?

When you use your scanner to OCR, you have to tell it that you're OCRing a document, rather than just scanning an image. How would a search engine know the difference?

Eliz.

[Lord Majestic]

Couldn’t SE's not carry out OCR on an .jpg image?

Its way too computationally intensive to be worth it, if you want text to be indexed then keep it as a text not image.

[longen]

Google could use a SETI type network - perhaps even for their normal dance, link analysis, etc

[Lord Majestic]

Google could use a SETI type network

They do not want to introduce dependency on community that could possibly interfer with their own corporate goals. A reasonable and expected decision from any multi-billion company.

OCRing every image is simply not feasible, much better and wiser decision NOT to do it, to force those who want to get ranked to use text.

[Beagle]

It's advisable to use alt tags on your images, anyway, especially if they include text. It's an accessibility issue for vision-impaired people who use text readers to access the web. So since you're, of course ;) , using alt tags already, why add another layer of technology for the SE's?