Google - Alt text penalty

[dburdon]

This is just an observation. And I think its perhaps one of the few issues by Ken's (Greeneagle) "dust settles" assessment of Google post Jagger 3.

I've noticed from the client categories I manage that many of the sites with strong visuals on the home page seem to be down. Initially I thought this may be to do with Flash. But Flash has always been a drag on Google SERPs. And anyway, to get on the front page of Google, you've got to have strong off page influences.

A closer inspection - in the categories I cover - shows that many of the sites are using jpeg or gif visuals.

Classic SEO tells us that these visuals will be accompanied by relevant alt text. An even closer inspection of just a few sites shows that the alt text has become transposed and sometimes corrupts the standard site copy.

Could Jagger also be addressing the issue of "alt text" spam?

[dburdon]

Apologies. There's a crucial "missed" missing in the first line of the above post. It was done very late UK time.

I'm saying that a possible "alt text" penalty was one of the few things missed in Ken's "the dust settles" article on Jagger.

[crobike]

This could be one reason too. All the sites which rank in the top 20 in our category have no keyword in the alt text. I will now test it and remove all the alt text of my main page. One has the main keyword of my site where I rank #600 at google.

I will let you know when there is any change in ranking after this.

[dburdon]

Crobike,

you are very brave.

I'm not implying that there should be no alt text. Only that Google may have imposed some sort of filter on length of the alt tag text.

[crobike]

Sory, I will change all the alt text with the main keyword in it. :-)

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by dburdon

Classic SEO tells us that these visuals will be accompanied by relevant alt text.

Hmmm ... "classic SEO" ... the ALT attribute is meant as a guiding help for those whose browsers don't display graphics (whatever the reason may be). So the ALT text has to be relevant to the FUNCTION of the graphic. If there is no function (as is the case in most decorational graphics), the tag should simply be empty. IF and ONLY IF a brief (very brief) description of the function includes your KW(s) in a way that makes sense (in regard to the function), then it is ok to include a KW. This is often the case with graphical menu buttons, where the link destination is explained briefly in the ALT text.

That being said, indeed the ALT attribute often gets abused for keyword stuffing. I have seen pages with gazillions of 1-pixel-spacer-images which were all loaded with KWs. This is open spam, and Google would be right to penalize that.

On a side note: I never understood why SEs give so much weight to ALT attributes. After all, these should be navigational/functional aids, and therefore should carry not much information from an SE point of view. I had a site which ranked well for a single term which appeared nowhere on the whole site except in the ALT text of a decorating image. This should not be, really. This just attracts spammers.


What should get more weight is the TITLE attribute (don't confuse with the title meta tag): There indeed you can and should give a somewhat longer description, whereas really extensive descritions should go into a LONGDESC attribute (a link to a page with in-depth description).

Ok, as soon as the SEs will index that we well see TITLE attribute spam ... sigh.

faglork

[sudhani]

Few things to take care of to avoid "alt tag penalty":

1. Use the same alt text across the site - for the same image.
2. Empty alt tags - for images less than 10X10 pixel.
3. Empty alt tags - for design elements.
4. No overstuffing of keywords.
5. When you are linking an image to another page - make sure that you include the keywords from the destination page as well.

Regards,
Sudha.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by faglork

On a side note: I never understood why SEs give so much weight to ALT attributes. After all, these should be navigational/functional aids, and therefore should carry not much information from an SE point of view. I had a site which ranked well for a single term which appeared nowhere on the whole site except in the ALT text of a decorating image. This should not be, really. This just attracts spammers.

faglork

Just had this conversation the other day. IMO ALT text should be given zero weight. I'm seeing its' use become increasingly deceptive. Ask someone who relies on the ALT description to be able to navigate or as a functional aide (its' purpose) and they'd likely want to see offending sites removed.

Dave

[KeithO]

Originally Posted by sudhani

Few things to take care of to avoid "alt tag penalty":

1. Use the same alt text across the site - for the same image.
2. Empty alt tags - for images less than 10X10 pixel.
3. Empty alt tags - for design elements.
4. No overstuffing of keywords.
5. When you are linking an image to another page - make sure that you include the keywords from the destination page as well.

Regards,
Sudha.

those are some pretty good tips right there.

[dburdon]

Graphics are a key element of the internet's visual value. The problem for search is that they can't be read by Google. So we have alt text instead. In terms of relevant search it works.

But if you think about it alt text can function like hidden (WOW) text. And maybe this is being abused.

[Faglork]

Originally Posted by dburdon

Graphics are a key element of the internet's visual value. The problem for search is that they can't be read by Google. So we have alt text instead.

To be correct: You (AB)USE alt text instead. It is not MEANT for providing keywords.

Originally Posted by dburdon

In terms of relevant search it works.

Yes, like many other spam techniques as well.

Originally Posted by dburdon

But if you think about it alt text can function like hidden (WOW) text. And maybe this is being abused.

Not "maybe". That is exactly the point.

faglork

[dburdon]

Faglork,

I don't see anything wrong in "natural" alt text. If a travel site shows a villa, what's wrong in saying its a villa? If an auto site shows a car, what's wrong with including the model in the alt text? Its no more wrong than using anchor text.

Google's spiders crawl text. If an image didn't have any accompany text you just get a big hole in the Google cache. If you look at a site with Flash images, this is more or less what you see.

In order to rank well, many sites would abandon graphics and revert purely to text. That wouldn't be a good development.

My original observation was based around some competitor sites with prominent graphics that fell post Jagger.

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by dburdon

Faglork,

I don't see anything wrong in "natural" alt text. If a travel site shows a villa, what's wrong in saying its a villa? If an auto site shows a car, what's wrong with including the model in the alt text? Its no more wrong than using anchor text.

Google's spiders crawl text. If an image didn't have any accompany text you just get a big hole in the Google cache. If you look at a site with Flash images, this is more or less what you see.

In order to rank well, many sites would abandon graphics and revert purely to text. That wouldn't be a good development.

My original observation was based around some competitor sites with prominent graphics that fell post Jagger.

Hope you don't mind my 2 cents...

The ALT attribute is not intended for ranking. Never was. Its' intended pupose is as a navigational/functional aide. No more, no less.

There's nothing wrong with an ALT description that accurately describes the image in its' absence. Problem is the increasing incidence of abuse purely for ranking reasons.

I don't agree at all that webmasters would abandon graphics and images in favor of text if the ALT attribute was ignored as a ranking function. Without a proper balance of text and visual stimuli, a site/page would be rather boring and lose visitors.

What would eliminating/devaluing the ALT attribute likely do?

1. Effectively discourage ALT spamming of page decorations. tiny images, keyword stuffing.
2. Cause webmasters to use more "captioning" if their site is primarily visual.

Both of these things are positive for those folks who rely on the ALT attribute as their means of utilizing the net.

Dave

[Ellio]

I just checked our main page that was effected by Jagger and found that we had repeatedly used the main keyword in many "more information" image alt tags.

This is legitimate as it was the correct description of the links to different kinds of the service:

(alt text for example only - not ours)
1. purple flowers
2. green flowers
3. bunches of flowers
4. flowers for weddings
5. pretty flowers
etc etc

Where the main keyword is flowers.

I am sure the googlbot may have treated this as keyword stuffing and it increase the total of the main keyword on the page by 100%

I have changed the alt text to memove the main keyword while leaving an accurate description.

1. purple
2. green flowers
3. bunches
4. weddings
5. pretty
etc etc


Any thoughts...

[crankydave]

Originally Posted by Ellio

I just checked our main page that was effected by Jagger and found that we had repeatedly used the main keyword in many "more information" image alt tags.

This is legitimate as it was the correct description of the links to different kinds of the service:

(alt text for example only - not ours)
1. purple flowers
2. green flowers
3. bunches of flowers
4. flowers for weddings
5. pretty flowers
etc etc

Where the main keyword is flowers.

I am sure the googlbot may have treated this as keyword stuffing and it increase the total of the main keyword on the page by 100%

I have changed the alt text to memove the main keyword while leaving an accurate description.

1. purple
2. green flowers
3. bunches
4. weddings
5. pretty
etc etc


Any thoughts...

Based upon the example you used, you did a disservice to those who need the ALT attribute.

Look at it this way...

If the image needed to be converted to braille for the sight impaired, what would "describe" what the user cannot see?

Your second list tells them nothing.

This is an example of why I believe the ALT attribute should be eliminated/devalued as a ranking factor.

Dave

[Ellio]

If the image needed to be converted to braille for the sight impaired, what would "describe" what the user cannot see?
Your second list tells them nothing.

Agreed but if we are being penalised what choice do we have?

[brian.mark]

Originally Posted by Ellio

Agreed but if we are being penalised what choice do we have?

Right now, you're running a test. Once the new page is indexed, you can decide if you were indeed penalized. If not, I'd go back to the more descriptive version.

I doubt if it's a penalty so much as being discounted from the ranking factors.

Brian.

[Ellio]

brian.mark wrote:

Right now, you're running a test. Once the new page is indexed, you can decide if you were indeed penalized. If not, I'd go back to the more descriptive version.

I doubt if it's a penalty so much as being discounted from the ranking factors.

I will, its just a feeling I have that Goog are paying very close attention to anything that looks over optimised to googlebot even if it is legitimate when looked at by a human. Having the keyword (legitimately) in nearly every alt tag may just have flagged a new filter - after all they can't get every aspect of every algo change right first time can they.

Live testing of new algs may be the only way to get a full picture and we may have to be the crash test dummies...

[dburdon]

I didn't mean to cause so much controversy.

I'd just noticed the phenomenon of sites with strong graphics on their home pages falling in the post Jagger rankings. My investigations - only in categories where I had client sites - seemed to indicate that the sites with "heavy" alt text had been devalued.

I'm not aware of Google issuing any alt text guidlines. But maybe they've just taken the initiative upon themselves and implemented some sort of filter.

[DannyS]

Maybe we are seeing an overall over-optimisation filter with the alt text just being one part of that. On sites that are recovering slightly from Jagger I am seeing positions improving in the "allinanchor" but not the "allintext". Could this tie in?

The least on page optimised site we have had hardly any movement under Jagger, in fact it seems to be moving higher.

[greeneagle]

dburdon:

"I'm saying that a possible "alt text" penalty was one of the few things missed in Ken's "the dust settles" article on Jagger."

I agree with you. In fact, I have never "stuffed" but if I use the same header graphic on different pages, I have titled them:

"Header Graphic "x" Page"
"Header Graphic "y