Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your business shine with Listings AI
      Moz Local

      Let your business shine with Listings AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. Alt tag for src='blank.gif' on lazy load images

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Alt tag for src='blank.gif' on lazy load images

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    2
    3
    1807
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • friendoffood
      friendoffood last edited by

      I didn't find an answer on a search on this, so maybe someone here has faced this before.

      I am loading 20 images that are in the viewport and a bit below.  The next 80 images I want to 'lazy-load'.  They therefore are seen by the bot as a blank.gif file.  However, I would like to get some credit for them by giving a description in the alt tag.  Is that a no-no?  If not, do they all have to be the same alt description since the src name is the same?  I don't want to mess things up with Google by being too aggressive, but at the same time those are valid images once they are lazy loaded, so would like to get some credit for them.

      Thanks!  Ted

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • friendoffood
        friendoffood last edited by

        Martijn,  thanks for your response.  I could see Google saying that on a given page the same source image shouldn't have more than one alt description, and either penalizing such or just picking one of them or ignoring it altogether.  It's the penalty I'm concerned with, of course. . But, I can also see that if they are seeing a blank.gif for the source and some code related to lazy loading they may go ahead and give credit to each alt as though a real src was loaded--and maybe even tying it to the real src image name for image search.  Just looking for a bit more feedback from real-world experience first..

        Has anyone else worked with this and determined if it is a pro or con?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Martijn_Scheijbeler
          Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

          Hi Ted, to be honest we do this and I don't see any big issues why we wouldn't do it. The placeholder image will probably get some more credits than usual. But the images we lazy load are loaded via JS and as Google says it can understand JS they should be able to get how we use it (too much assumptions I know, but I have more things to worry about ;-)).

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          Browse Questions

          Explore more categories

          • Moz Tools

            Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

          • SEO Tactics

            Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

          • Community

            Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

          • Digital Marketing

            Chat about tactics outside of SEO

          • Research & Trends

            Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

          • Support

            Connect on product support and feature requests.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • moon-boots

            How to add Canonical Tags on Opencart Products

            Does anyone know how to add canonical tags to product pages in Opencart? Is this possible to do in htaccess? If so, how specifically should it be written in? Please do not post any links to other pages which reference generic canonical information as I've read them all and none help. I'm looking for an Opencart specific answer, or a way to do it in htaccess.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | moon-boots
            0
          • Shawn124

            Switching from Http to Https, but what about images and image link juice?

            Hi Ya'll. I'm transitioning our http version website to https.  Important question: Do images have to have 301 redirects? If so, how and where? Please send me a link or explain best practices. Best, Shawn

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn124
            1
          • MIGandCo

            Is it alright to repeat a keyword in the title tag?

            I know at first glance, the answer to this is a resounding NO, that it can be construed as keyword stuffing,
            but please hear me out. I am working on optimizing a client's website and although MOST of the title tags
            can be optimized without repeating a keyword, occasionally I run into one where it doesn't read right if I
            don't repeat the keyword. Here's an example: Current title:
            Photoshop on the Cloud | Adobe Photoshop Webinars | Company Name What I am considering using as the optimized title:
            Adobe Photoshop on the Cloud | Adobe Photoshop Webinars | Company Name Yes, I know both titles are longer than recommended. In both instances, only the company name gets
            truncated so I am not too worried about that. So I guess what I want to know is this: Am I right in my original assumption that it is NEVER okay to
            repeat keywords in a title tag or is it alright when it makes sense to do so?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MIGandCo
            0
          • rpaiva

            Adding a Canonical Tag to each page referencing itself?

            Hey Mozers! I've noticed that on www.Zappos.com they have a Canonical tag on each page referencing it self.  I have heard that this is a popular method but I dont see the point in canon tagging a page to its self. Any thoughts?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rpaiva
            0
          • TT_Vakantiehuizen

            Does a UTM tag influence the linkvalue?

            Will Google value a link with a UTM tag the same as a clean link without a UTM tag? I should say that a UTM tag link is not a natural link so the linkvalue is zero. Anyone any idea how to look at this?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TT_Vakantiehuizen
            0
          • lbohen

            How to See Image Metadata?

            We sell 1000s of audiobooks and get our cover images and descriptions from the publisher’s sites. When I download a cover image such as this one (http://www.audiobooksonline.com/media/Alex-Cross-Run-James-Patterson.jpg)
            I always rename and re-size it before installing at our Web store. Would this process result in any publisher’s metadata in the image we use at our Web store and/or anything else Google would not like?
            Is there an online utility that would allow me to see metadata in our images?

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lbohen
            0
          • bjs2010

            Meta NoIndex tag and Robots Disallow

            Hi all, I hope you can spend some time to answer my first of a few questions 🙂 We are running a Magento site - layered/faceted navigation nightmare has created thousands of duplicate URLS! Anyway, during my process to tackle the issue, I disallowed in Robots.txt anything in the querystring that was not a p (allowed this for pagination). After checking some pages in Google, I did a site:www.mydomain.com/specificpage.html and a few duplicates came up along with the original with
            "There is no information about this page because it is blocked by robots.txt" So I had added in Meta Noindex, follow on all these duplicates also but I guess it wasnt being read because of Robots.txt. So coming to my question. Did robots.txt block access to these pages? If so, were these already in the index and after disallowing it with robots, Googlebot could not read Meta No index? Does Meta Noindex Follow on pages actually help Googlebot decide to remove these pages from index? I thought Robots would stop and prevent indexation? But I've read this:
            "Noindex is a funny thing, it actually doesn’t mean “You can’t index this”, it means “You can’t show this in search results”. Robots.txt disallow means “You can’t index this” but it doesn’t mean “You can’t show it in the search results”. I'm a bit confused about how to use these in both preventing duplicate content in the first place and then helping to address dupe content once it's already in the index. Thanks! B

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs2010
            0
          • maddogx

            Multiple IPs (load balancing) for same domain

            Hello, I'm considering moving our main website to a multiple servers, perhaps in multiple different datacenters and use a DNS round robin load balancing by assigning it 4 different IP addresses (probably from 4 different C classes). example:
            ourdomain.com A  1.1.1.1
            ourdomain.com A  2.2.2.2
            ourdomain.com A  3.3.3.3
            ourdomain.com A  4.4.4.4 Every time you ping the domain you will get a response from another IP of the group. Therefore search engines will see a different IP each time they scan the site. We have used the main IP for our website for past 6 years without changing it. We have a quite good SEO in our niche which I don't want to loose of course. My question is, will adding more IPs to the domain affect any how on the ranking ? What is the suggested way to do it anyway? What is recommended to do before and after? Thanks for you attention and help in advance. Dmitry S.

            Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | maddogx
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Digital Marketers
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.