November 19, 2008 by James Oliver
Through a thread on Google Groups a Google staffer named John has outlined exactly how we should be using both title attributes and alt attributes, or at least Google’s idea of how we should be using them. The main gist is that they should be as useful as possible to an end user. Thanks for that Google, we wouldn’t have got there on our own. However, there is also some fairly useful info about exactly what they expect.
According to Google the alt attribute should be used to describe an image. Because, obviously, the Googlebot doesn’t actually see the image it will focus on the information provided within the alt section.
The title attribute on the other hand should be used when the image doubles as a hyperlink to another page, perhaps a larger version of the picture. The attribute should explain what will happen if a user clicks on the image, something like ‘view a larger image.’
No mention is made of whether or not Google use either of these attributes as ranking criteria. Even so, this is a useful clarification from the search engine giant that should be valuable advice for anyone who displays a lot of images on their site, i.e. most people.
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