Is Base64 encoding images in general better for SEO or worse?

[ChrisHolgate]

We've made a lot of changes to our website (https://refreshcartridges.co.uk/) over the years, with our website developer putting a heavy emphasis on improving page loading times in general.

One of the those changes has been to base64 encode or in-line the majority of images on our site which has reduced our loading times down to under a second for most of our pages for our visitors which are mainly based in the UK.

My question is whether in-lining the images, thus removing the images filenames for index association results in this technique being a net-good or net-bad for our sites SEO in general, particularly on our frontpage.

[MikeTek]

Hi Chris,

To my understanding, my take is that, unless Google Image search is an important channel for your business, the improvements to page speed/UX will be a net gain for SEO.

Using Base64 encoding for images may result in those images falling out of Google Image search, but the pages themselves are not likely be negatively impacted.

Caveat: Google has not communicated on the impact of this specifically, and we've not tested this with Distilled clients - I've based my answer on my understanding of Google's technology, their emphasis on all things page speed and the fact that this approach is growing across the web (so it's likely Google has already solved for this or else will have soon).

Best,
Mike