Google’s John Mueller responded to questions round picture search engine optimisation, particularly explaining that whereas the picture itself and the alt textual content is helpful, so is the web page that picture is embedded on. That is all helpful for Google to know the relevance of a picture based mostly on a particular question.
John stated in the case of understanding the picture, having a photograph of a seashore on a web site is nice and all, however it would not let you know a lot. If that picture is embedded on a lodge web site, it means, that’s the seashore by that lodge. Whether it is embedded on a photographer’s web site, it tells you this photographer can take images by the seashore, and so forth – you get the purpose.
A Reddit thread requested:
Are photographs alt texts nonetheless related for search engine optimisation with all the pc imaginative and prescient and pictures recognition development? Is there any information of Google or different engines like google utilizing machine studying fashions to crawl photographs relatively than counting on the consumer offered alt texts?
Right here is how John replied:
For picture search, there’s the context that comes from the web page + picture mixture that issues. A photograph of a seashore is likely to be a soothing poster, it is likely to be the seashore from a lodge, it might be the positioning of a chemical spill. Simply understanding that the picture is of a seashore would not actually give adequate background data to have the ability to present it in picture search appropriately. Loads of it does come from the web page, and the alt-text is exclusive in that it is what instantly connects the picture to the web page with context.
Until your web site is a photograph company, site visitors for “picture of a seashore” is not going to be that helpful – however for a lodge, having “lodge with seashore in X” will be related. Once more, a number of that may come from the remainder of the web page, however the alt attribute worth is a singular alternative to offer context. (And with that … in the event you use AI to create alt texts based mostly on the picture file, and get “picture of a seashore” because the alt textual content for that picture, you are not getting probably the most out of the alt textual content, each for customers & engines like google.)
So sure, the web page the picture is embedded on can be necessary for a lot of causes.
Discussion board dialogue at Reddit.
