Images
Images are used on websites to provide more engaging experiences for users, while also presenting more information about a topic. While positive for user experience, images can cause issues for a website’s SEO and performance. Our key takeaways from Google’s ongoing SEO Office Hours sessions cover more insights into the impact of unoptimized images, as well as best practice recommendations from Google.
For more on website content best practices for SEO, read our Guide to Optimizing Website Content for Search — or explore our Website Intelligence Academy resources on SEO & Content.
Google Doesn’t Crawl CSS Background Images
Google doesn’t pick up background images added to HTML tags with CSS. Google sees these images as part of the design rather than an element on the page that is useful for web or image search and skip crawling these completely.
Image Credit Links Are Treated as Regular Backlinks
Image credit links carry the same weight as any other links and are seen as regular backlinks by Google.
Images Crawled Less Frequently Than Pages
Images are crawled less frequently than content, so if these are migrated, to a CDN for example, it will take Googlebot longer to recrawl these.
Google Uses Img Tag for Image Search and Doesn’t Use CSS Images
Google uses the img tag with the source attribute pointing at the image for image search. Google doesn’t use CSS images at all for image search.
Remove CSS Stretching Images to Max Viewport to See How Full Page Renders
If the CSS sets images to the max viewport this will stretch them and stop you being able to see how the rest of the page is rendering in Fetch as Google. However, this view doesn’t represent what Googlebot is actually rendering.
Old Images Should Be Redirected to Keep Them in Image Search
Old images should be redirected (during a site migration for example) otherwise they could be lost from image search.
Google Includes SVGs in Image Search But Doesn’t Use Text
Google picks up SVGs for image search but doesn’t use the text within them. So it is important to add context for SVGs, either alt text and/or a caption.
Alt Attribute Provides Image Context But Can Inform Web Search
Alt attribute provides context for images and is also used as part of a page for web search. But in general Google can pick out enough information from the rest of the page that they don’t have to rely on information from alt attribute.
Google Doesn’t Use EXIF Data For Image Search
Google generally doesn’t use any EXIF data from images for image search. However, the one exception is the title or name of the image in the EXIF data. If there are particular details you want Google to see from the EXIF data then add this as content near the image.
Provide Relevant Content About Images to Improve Likelihood of Ranking
Extra relevant content provided around images will make it easier for Google to understand them and will increase the likelihood of ranking in image search.