On a blog post on June 20th this year, I wrote a blog post wondering, “Can Google Read Images?” Well, it turns out they can. I found similar blog posts that have reported the same, but I wanted to try for myself in a small experiment.
To complete this test, I created an image that included the text “The Worst St Pete SEO Expert.” The only place that exact phrase existed was on the rendered image. No where else. Not the filename, ALT text, etc.
Within 4 or 5 days, I found the following in an image search:
So, there’s no doubt that Google can indeed read images. However, this didn’t show any increase any organic web rankings. Therefore, this appears to only affect image searches.
If you click the link, it goes to my homepage. That’s because the homepage is most-likely a high-priority crawl target as I developed my most recent blog posts to appear on the homepage.
I suspect if you’re a photographer or image creator looking to improve your stock photography sales, this might be an excellent option to grow your incoming traffic.
For those who are focused solely on organic web searches, this may not provide much of a rankings boost. However, it’s great information to know.
Overall, I’m impressed and tickled. Perhaps I should have provided a less self-deprecating phrase, but I wanted this to really stick out. Let’s see what trouble it brews for me later.
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