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.
Does google index images or ALT text only?
-
Does google index images or ALT text only?
-
Nope. No need for images. They just know about the content and link to it. The cached HTML shows they store a copy (or cache) of the HTML though. I could be wrong about the images but that would exponentially increase their storage needs so it seems unlikely.
-
Thanks a lot. Does Google Store the images and all Html into there servers to deliver them faster?
Just to know if a copy of all content from our site is also stored on Googles servers
-
Hey Archie
Google indexes everything. Images. Alt text for images. Images and their alt text. If you take a look at the cached version of a page you can see all HTML content indexed. You can see the cached version of a page by prefixing the URL with info: in a google search (or in the address bar in Chrome).
info:www.example.co.uk
I suspect that is not what you are asking though and rather you want to know whether Google uses the alt text when indexing and ranking a page. Again, I would answer that Google uses (or at least tries to use) everything. They will review the context (the page), the name of the image, the alt text and anything else that may lend context (inbound links, anchors, linking pages etc).
Googles Image Publishing Guidelines page is a good read:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/114016?hl=enKey takeaways from that page being:
- image name
- alt text
- on page context
- linking page context
Which of course is not to say that all of these attributes are used in all cases. I would suspect they are examined but given the general lack of useful anchors and well named images they are used when possible.
Which of course opens up a great big opportunity for those where images are a useful source of inbound traffic and competitors are using lazy CMS image names like image_z343wd.jpg and default "product image" or blank anchors.
Always difficult to answer a question without context as so many moving parts but certainly hope that helps.
Take care
Marcus
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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.
Related Questions
-
Is there a way to get a list of all pages of your website that are indexed in Google?
I am trying to put together a comprehensive list of all pages that are indexed in Google and have differing opinions on how to do this.
Technical SEO | | SpodekandCo0 -
What are best options for website built with navigation drop-down menus in JavaScript, to get those menus indexed by Google?
This concerns f5.com, a large website with navigation menus that drop down when hovered over. The sub nav items (example: “DDoS Protection”) are not cached by Google and therefore do not distribute internal links properly to help those sub-pages rank well. Best option naturally is to change the nav menus from JS to CSS but barring that, is there another option? Will Schema SiteNavigationElement work as an alternate?
Technical SEO | | CarlLarson0 -
Why google indexed pages are decreasing?
Hi, my website had around 400 pages indexed but from February, i noticed a huge decrease in indexed numbers and it is continually decreasing. can anyone help me to find out the reason. where i can get solution for that? will it effect my web page ranking ?
Technical SEO | | SierraPCB0 -
ALT attribute keyword on the same image but different pages
Hi there, As i'm sure you're probably aware, moz advises to use a keyword within the ALT attribute on pages... On a new website I am launching, I have the ability to add an alt keyword to image headers. On multiple pages we have the exact same image but with different keywords associated them inside the alt attribute. The image itself is a collage of different images and so the keywords used can, quite sneakily, match the image. My question is therefore, will using different keywords on the same image on different pages have a negative effect on SEO? Thanks, Stuart
Technical SEO | | Stuart260 -
Staging site and "live" site have both been indexed by Google
While creating a site we forgot to password protect the staging site while it was being built. Now that the site has been moved to the new domain, it has come to my attention that both the staging site (site.staging.com) and the "live" site (site.com) are both being indexed. What is the best way to solve this problem? I was thinking about adding a 301 redirect from the staging site to the live site via HTACCESS. Any recommendations?
Technical SEO | | melen0 -
How to Remove /feed URLs from Google's Index
Hey everyone, I have an issue with RSS /feed URLs being indexed by Google for some of our Wordpress sites. Have a look at this Google query, and click to show omitted search results. You'll see we have 500+ /feed URLs indexed by Google, for our many category pages/etc. Here is one of the example URLs: http://www.howdesign.com/design-creativity/fonts-typography/letterforms/attachment/gilhelveticatrade/feed/. Based on this content/code of the XML page, it looks like Wordpress is generating these: <generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.2</generator> Any idea how to get them out of Google's index without 301 redirecting them? We need the Wordpress-generated RSS feeds to work for various uses. My first two thoughts are trying to work with our Development team to see if we can get a "noindex" meta robots tag on the pages, by they are dynamically-generated pages...so I'm not sure if that will be possible. Or, perhaps we can add a "feed" paramater to GWT "URL Parameters" section...but I don't want to limit Google from crawling these again...I figure I need Google to crawl them and see some code that says to get the pages out of their index...and THEN not crawl the pages anymore. I don't think the "Remove URL" feature in GWT will work, since that tool only removes URLs from the search results, not the actual Google index. FWIW, this site is using the Yoast plugin. We set every page type to "noindex" except for the homepage, Posts, Pages and Categories. We have other sites on Yoast that do not have any /feed URLs indexed by Google at all. Side note, the /robots.txt file was previously blocking crawling of the /feed URLs on this site, which is why you'll see that note in the Google SERPs when you click on the query link given in the first paragraph.
Technical SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
De-indexed from Google
Hi Search Experts! We are just launching a new site for a client with a completely new URL. The client can not provide any access details for their existing site. Any ideas how can we get the existing site de-indexed from Google? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | rikmon0 -
Replace Header Text With Image
I have a static website that I would like to retheme. I have the mockup, and its spliced. The website holds nice rankings right now, and I want to keep them in place. The one thing that will change with this new design is the header will no longer be text, but instead an image. Is there a way to ensure googlebot still sees the H1 tag header exactly how it is now but use an image for the header instead? I dont want any blackhat tricks that will get me banned. Just wondering if there is a simple way to have googlebot see the header as text (not ALT img txt) so the site does not appear to have changed at all. (It hasnt, I only am changing the graphics and colors of background, and header image for better branding.
Technical SEO | | getbigyadig0
