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letting a search engine 'see' image text? Pete 10-10-2007
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Posted by Pete on October 11, 2007, 3:00 pm
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>> I may eventually just have to see if the alt attribute shows up in a
>> google...
>
>Beware of using ALT. If I turn images off, then I'll see your "hidden"
>text in my browser, where you might have captioned your image "Pete (The
>Bastard)" :-)
>
>I'd see it if I viewed the source anyway.
>
Hey, I'm not being that Machiavellian... (:-))

Not trying to conceal anything here -- actually wanting to *provide* info
for search engines while avoiding redundancy.

                                        -- Pete --

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The address in the header is a Spam Bucket -- don't bother replying to it...
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Posted by David Stone on October 12, 2007, 7:34 am
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 neverland@jwgibbs.cchem.berkeley.edu (Pete) wrote:

> >> I may eventually just have to see if the alt attribute shows up in a
> >> google...
> >
> >Beware of using ALT. If I turn images off, then I'll see your "hidden"
> >text in my browser, where you might have captioned your image "Pete (The
> >Bastard)" :-)
> >
> >I'd see it if I viewed the source anyway.
> >
> Hey, I'm not being that Machiavellian... (:-))
>
> Not trying to conceal anything here -- actually wanting to *provide* info
> for search engines while avoiding redundancy.
>
>                                         -- Pete --

I think in your particular case that if you really want search engines
to find the information, then you should include it in a paragraph
of actual text along with the image (even though the image itself
contains annotation).

Elsewhere in this thread there was mention of using keywords, and
whether or not search engines look at this: in previous discussions
here, one opinion was that search engines take into account whether
or not the keywords are also present in page text. I have no idea
if this is actually true or not.

Posted by John Hosking on October 12, 2007, 11:14 am
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David Stone wrote:
>
> I think in your particular case that if you really want search engines
> to find the information, then you should include it in a paragraph
> of actual text along with the image (even though the image itself
> contains annotation).

I still believe alt attributes are useful (i.e., used by search engines)
containers of indexable text. Google returns one of my pages when I
search for text included only in alt texts on that page. I'm convinced.

>
> Elsewhere in this thread there was mention of using keywords, and
> whether or not search engines look at this: in previous discussions
> here, one opinion was that search engines take into account whether
> or not the keywords are also present in page text.

In which case the meta keywords can be ignored and the textual content
used for indexing, which is what Google tells us to do anyway.

> I have no idea if this is actually true or not.

I am likewise unenlightened in the mystical secrets of the SE's.


--
John
Pondering the value of the UIP: http://improve-usenet.org/

Posted by Bergamot on October 11, 2007, 7:30 am
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Pete wrote:
>
> I may eventually just have to see if the alt attribute shows up in a
> google...

AIUI, search engines tend to not index alt text at all, though some may
if the image is a link.

--
Berg

Posted by Pete on October 11, 2007, 3:13 pm
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>Pete wrote:
>>
>> I may eventually just have to see if the alt attribute shows up in a
>> google...
>
>AIUI, search engines tend to not index alt text at all, though some may
>if the image is a link.
>
Ehh. Not too useful then.

What about '<meta name="keywords" content=...>', that I seem to remember
was once recommended for this sort of thing? I also remember hearing
that engines tend to ignore this because of misuse...

                                        -- Pete --

--
============================================================================
The address in the header is a Spam Bucket -- don't bother replying to it...
(If you do need to email, replace the account name with my true name.)

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