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=en

Key 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

Hey folks

24 hours after we identified and fixed the canonical issue the site is now indexed again so it does look like it was indeed a canonical conundrum. Both the HTTP and HTTPS sites were claiming to be the canonical version so in some respects creating a conflict. We removed this conflict and it is now indexed.

Thanks for the extra eyes folks - appreciated and if anyone ever needs another pair of eyes to look a problem give me a shout.

Cheers
Marcus

Hey,

in an ideal world, make sure it is has no trailing slash. But, as per the Google specific recommendations, make sure both resolve as a 200 OK rather than redirecting / to non /.

Think about it -

The browser removes the trailing slash. Also, go to any big site, Google, SEOMoz - the all have no slash. But.. check it in webbug and they resolve on both.

For me, having a trailing slash on the root or anywhere is just something else for folks to forget to add if they are linking or some such.

Here I would just remove the trailing slash in your canonical if you can just to be sure but the usual rules don't apply on the homepage and www.example.com & www.example.com/ are regarded as the same thing.

I have constant crisis of confidence - i often wonder if I am making it up as I go along or somewhere down the history of all the hundreds of SEO audits I have done I actually learned something along the way! I have actually googled something that I was unsure about and found my own blog post about it before. I think, much like Homer Simpson, every new thing I learn now pushes out an older thing!

Hope that helps!
Marcus