Recently I have been receiving a growing number of visitors through Google Image Search. So I am going to talk a bit about the difference between search and image search.
One of that first differences it that what you call your images, file name and alt text, is not the only factor in the ranking for the search. My most frequently visited post from image search is about how pictures affect conversions.
Most frequently for this image:
The file name is space.jpg the alt=”Negative space” but it most frequently brings visitors in on conversion related queries. So the question is why? The reason that this image is popular is because it is surrounded by lots of text that is implicitly related to the image. Google in particular uses context to determine the content of images, in spite of alt text. If you are paying attention you will find that at times Google displays the name of images and at times they display excerpts from on page text.
At this time I have not played with enough queries to have a strong opinion on what induces one assessment to be favored over another. But from the searches thus far Google appears to mix both text from the content section and alt tag to satisfy most queries.
Tags: conversion · Google · SEO1 Comment
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1 response so far ↓
Good post. Hope you’re going to follow up with some information about optimizing for Google Video search and for Google News search.