In the Skype group, a member reported that they got off the phone with a Google rep who told them that high resolution images were good for SEO. That’s enough for us to jump in and investigate. Does image resolution matter? We test that out.
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This came from the Skype group. A member reported that they were on the phone with a Google Rep who was giving them SEO advice. I do not know the context, I do not know if they are talking to an AdWords guy or if somebody was purporting to be a Google Rep or I do not know the scenario but it was, they just got off the phone with a Google Rep giving SEO advice and the advice was Google wants higher resolution images and if you do that, you will get a ranking boost. So, that is good enough.
Pages were indexed for their keywords and then images were added. The lower resolution was added to the number 3 and a higher resolution was added to the 1, 2, 4, and 5. The idea is, if Google likes those higher resolution images, the number 3 will drop, is the concept. What is nutty is that it did. It dropped. It took a minute and it all went to where it was. It was heart stopping for a second and then, good. It didn’t take long at all. It was only a matter of days. Images do factor in some freshness stuff like that and that could be a technique to shimmy the serps a bit but in terms of a ranking factor, it is not there. We ran it the other way, putting the higher resolution image to the 3rd. The idea here is if the higher resolution page is better than the lower resolution, it should move up. It actually dropped. This is telling me that this is not a factor. Unfortunately, there is no super hack here. Higher resolution images aren’t going to give you that boost, unfortunately. We had hopes, especially after the initial sorting, but unfortunately, it was not meant to be.