This came from a redo and expansion on a previous test on ranking with image name and its help in ranking. The test came to be rather inconclusive so we thought of taking another look whilst testing putting words as the images themselves. We test if Google could read them and if so, will they appear in the search?
Test Downloads
Transcription Below
This is a fun continuation of some tests we’ve done. We have found out a little while back that Google acquired a company which renders images and figures out what is in the image. The idea is that, can Google read what is in an image. Jo Priest put this together and what he mentioned in Test 274, the results were a little murky and we really couldn’t see one way or the other. This is a pretty long test.
Jo’s write up are thorough, there is no doubt about that. This test was run through multiple times and what was kind of fun was, basically, we are finding that Google will read words and images. You can put a keyword in an image and Google will then put that image in an image search, pretty effectively. What Jo found out though, was it is not as consistent to get a page indexed in a regular serps when it had the keyword on the image.
So, it is not the best technique to get something indexed in the regular serps but image search, this is something that you can do. But I also think that when you think about some implications of this – putting words in images might not be a bad way to 2003 stuff things right now because I bet they do not have anything that can monitor stuffing. If getting things in the image search is important to you, you’ve got an image heavy site and you rely on traffic from your images, from people looking up your images, this I think is something you should employ immediately.
Run through Jo’s test, it is just fantastic, all the stuff that he has done, putting the word in an image and getting it to show in the serps and within the image search. He is remarkably thorough, and I think his analysis is great. The bottom-line is, this is a technique that I would use to try to get something indexed in the serps. It may or may not help with rank so much, but it can definitely help with the image part.
The other thing that you should think about to, as you get into the semantic web or Google understanding what pages are about, or Google understanding what you are talking about, this might be another sort of semi schema hack to help Google get to the point of what this page is about. It might get into those sorts of concept, so it is actually something that I think is worthwhile looking into and consider getting some words into your images that are actually keyword rich.
Andy, I don’t think we have any clients that are huge in image search, do we?
Andrew: Not really, but what you mentioned about semantic web might be interesting for sites in the ecommerce page. If you maybe use the name of the product on product images and stuff like that to help them rank.
That is great. A lot of people want to win the product name or product number. You are trying to get ahead of a whole field of people that have the exact same product images. Maybe put the name, the words, in the image. Doctor the image, you are not changing the image that the company has given you that you have to use as your stock photo, put your writing on top of it, with the product name – you might actually jump to the top. That is a great idea.