Someone tested how much weight image file name, link text, and alt and title attributes have… Link text was important and got ranked. Title attributes (on links and images) were ignored completely. Alt tags were sometimes used if there was no link text. And file names were pretty unimportant. They might get indexed in some cases, but they didn’t rank.
Re: Google ignores title attributes in images & links
A little confused (seems to be my theme for today!)
The alt tag on images is ignored? I thought the primary purpose of alt tags was for image results? If they’re ignored the alt tag and file name, how does Google know not to return images of hedgehogs if I search for spoons? Not that I often search for spoons… or hedgehogs.
Having said that, some images from my old blogs are coming up in Google with no alt text but for keywords related to the site name.
Re: Google ignores title attributes in images & links
While I’m always grateful for information, I generally take anything anyone says about google with a grain of salt. There are too many factors involved to make blanket statements for the most part since they are constantly tweaking their algorithms.
File names are of paramount importance for images.google.com (just search for “nice ass” and see what all the file names are that you get back). I realize of course that you’re talking about standard google, but would it really be safe to assume that google doesn’t borrow any code from images.google.com and that they completely disregard the data collected by their image engine? I think that would be weird, but again, I’m just speculating since no one really knows what goes on behind the curtain that is google.
I remember a time in the early 2000’s where the word on the street was that your meta information and <title> tag had no bearing, it was all keyword density, now you’ll see that most say the opposite.
Where does that leave me? I just build a quality site, get my links back, use the tools that HTML makes available to you in getting as much info out accurately about your site that you can then start linking it up.
Re: Google ignores title attributes in images & links
I’ve been doing some Google tweaking with my new site design. One test for the term sleeping surfer was interesting. Google image results for sleeping surfer shows an image from this page of mine second and this page of mine third.
The image pages that rank 1st and 3rd (before and after my two images) are both flickr pages.
When you look at my code, and the 3rd ranking flickr image page code… you can see why the 3rd page is after mine.
The meat is in the 1st ranking flickr image page. Both flickr pages look exactly the same but with a different image. The gold is in the code as I like to say 
For anyone who bothers to look you’ll find a case study showing opposite results of what the guy on webmasterworld is claiming. I always doubt the guys with “results” who don’t give the urls so you can verify what they claim. bleah!
Re: Google ignores title attributes in images & links
Well that’s no surprise regarding IMG TITLE tags. That’s an interesting verification about the filename, too.
I’d add a couple of things - your ALT tags will appear on searches when you do a search using site:websiteurl.com keyword if you submit an image sitemap for your website. So that tells me that the ALT tags are indexed in there. That attribute is extremely important. Other factors would be the relevant text surrounding the ALT attribute, as well as how well linked-to the page is.
In short, don’t stop maintaining your site’s image sitemap.
Steve
Re: Google ignores title attributes in images & links
I think I’m going to keep making use of all the available options.
Like many of the SEO tips out there, they fail to take into account one primary factor - things change.
So many webmasters follow the rumours about SEO tactics instead of just creating good content for visitors. That will ALWAYS be Google’s primary aim; to supply the most relevant and original content to searchers. Employ all the SEO tactics you like, but never ignore the fact that your images, text and everything about your site/s should be for other Human eyes first.
If you have 1000 posts created using SEO tactics that Google decides tomorrow are void, your site is gone. If you just write for other people without the emphasis on SEO, your site is safe. It’s as simple as that in my opinion.
Re: Google ignores title attributes in images & links
It would be wonderful if that were reality.
In my world, over the last 10 years, Google has given and Google has taken.
Google has given when I paid attention and created for Google. Google has taken when I closed my eyes and created from the heart.
If you learn one thing in life learn this: learn who makes the rules, then quickly and quietly learn how to manipulate the boundaries of those rules to your favor. Favor always goes to those who pay attention and act accordingly.
Also, nothing is ever safe when someone else makes the rules. Look at the last three years of world history. Keep learning, keep evolving and, as you say, never put all your eggs in one basket.
Re: Google ignores title attributes in images & links
[QUOTE=Squirt;88632]
Google has given when I paid attention and created for Google. Google has taken when I closed my eyes and created from the heart. .[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately it’s the same that I’ve found.
Google strangles progress and good content. Majority of the sites I see in the prime positions on Google all have used black SEO to get there. Building up dead link networks to fake popularity. If a site has millions of incoming links from spam networks it’s impossible to compete. And if you do report bad sites nothing happens. Yet perfectly good and popular sites gets dropped out of Googles index at totally random times for no apparent reasons. But these massive link bloated sites never get affected due to the volume of incoming links.
However the image findings are not difficult to believe, I guess a lot of webmasters spam the IMG tags, file names etc so it would make sense to ignore most of the text people put into them. Even so, it still plays into the hands of spammers as they already spam the link text any way.