Matt Cutts Discusses the Importance of alt Tags - Mattcutts Video Transcript
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Saturday, April 12, 2008
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So you imagine you have gone to Google images and you type in Cat or Cat's Cache you might get a picture like this, now just to let people know this is wonderful right, here is my cat, Emmy Cutts, here she is a ball of yarn and she loves to play with the yarn that's all really handy. But computers are not great at saying oh this is a picture a cat next to a ball of yarn, so in fact if you go to Google images and go to the Advance search you can't say show me image type faces and we can sort of pick out faces seen from the seen in actions does really very well.
But the general problem of you know, detecting what an image is and been able to describe it, is really really hard; so you shouldn't count on computer being able to do that, instead you can help Google with that. Now let's see what this image might look like, if you look at the right this might be a typical image source "img src - "DSC00042.JPG" you know, you got your image tag, u describe what the source is, here is DSC because it is a digital camera, you know blah blah blah 42.JPG, that doesn't give us lot of information, right? You won't be able to say this is cat with a ball of yarn we don't want to say, here is number that gives a virtually zero information, if you go down a little bit, here is sort of information that we want to show up, you won't be able to say this is Matt's cat, Amy Cutts, with some yarn; right? & you know that's not a lot of words but it adequate describes the scene, it gives you a very clear picture what's going on.
It includes words like yarn, a word like Emmy Cutts, which is all completely relevant to that image and it isn't stuffed with tons of words like cat, cat, cat, feline, lots of cats, cat breeding, cat fur with all sorts of stuffs. So you want to have a very simple description, sort of included with that image; how do you do that? If you look here,
"Matt Cat, Emmy, Cutts, with some yarn> you can see this image tag, image source and an ALT tag which stand for alternative text, and if so somebody is using a screen reader, or they can't load the image for a reason, your browser can sow you this alternative text and you know it is very helpful for Google. Now you can see what's going on, different people and people who are interested in accessibility can also get a good description what the image is, you are not spamming; this is a total of 7 words, if u got 200 words in your ALT text, you really don't need a ton of words because 7 is enough to describe a scene pretty well. Right? If you get 20 or 25, that's even getting a little bit out there, 7 is perfectly fine, you are talking whatz going with in the picture itself.
You can also look for alternative tags like tidal and things like that but this is enough to help Google to know whatz going on in the image. You can go in advance, you could think about naming your image something like 'Cat and Yarn.JPG' but we are looking for something light weigh and easy to do, adding an ALT tag is very easy to do and you should pretty much do it in all of your images, it helps your accessibility and it can help us (Google) to understand whatz going on in your image.
Why we prepared this Video transcript?
We know this video is more than a year old but still there are people who have questions about their site and want to listen from a Search Engine Expert. Also there are millions of Non-English people who want to know what's there in this video so a transcript is something that can be easily translated to be read in other languages. We know there are people with hearing disability who browse our site this is a friendly version for them where they can read and understand what's there in this video.
This transcript is copyright - Search Engine Genie.
Feel free to translate them but make sure proper credit is given to Search Engine Genie
But the general problem of you know, detecting what an image is and been able to describe it, is really really hard; so you shouldn't count on computer being able to do that, instead you can help Google with that. Now let's see what this image might look like, if you look at the right this might be a typical image source "img src - "DSC00042.JPG" you know, you got your image tag, u describe what the source is, here is DSC because it is a digital camera, you know blah blah blah 42.JPG, that doesn't give us lot of information, right? You won't be able to say this is cat with a ball of yarn we don't want to say, here is number that gives a virtually zero information, if you go down a little bit, here is sort of information that we want to show up, you won't be able to say this is Matt's cat, Amy Cutts, with some yarn; right? & you know that's not a lot of words but it adequate describes the scene, it gives you a very clear picture what's going on.
It includes words like yarn, a word like Emmy Cutts, which is all completely relevant to that image and it isn't stuffed with tons of words like cat, cat, cat, feline, lots of cats, cat breeding, cat fur with all sorts of stuffs. So you want to have a very simple description, sort of included with that image; how do you do that? If you look here,
"Matt Cat, Emmy, Cutts, with some yarn> you can see this image tag, image source and an ALT tag which stand for alternative text, and if so somebody is using a screen reader, or they can't load the image for a reason, your browser can sow you this alternative text and you know it is very helpful for Google. Now you can see what's going on, different people and people who are interested in accessibility can also get a good description what the image is, you are not spamming; this is a total of 7 words, if u got 200 words in your ALT text, you really don't need a ton of words because 7 is enough to describe a scene pretty well. Right? If you get 20 or 25, that's even getting a little bit out there, 7 is perfectly fine, you are talking whatz going with in the picture itself.You can also look for alternative tags like tidal and things like that but this is enough to help Google to know whatz going on in the image. You can go in advance, you could think about naming your image something like 'Cat and Yarn.JPG' but we are looking for something light weigh and easy to do, adding an ALT tag is very easy to do and you should pretty much do it in all of your images, it helps your accessibility and it can help us (Google) to understand whatz going on in your image.
Why we prepared this Video transcript?
We know this video is more than a year old but still there are people who have questions about their site and want to listen from a Search Engine Expert. Also there are millions of Non-English people who want to know what's there in this video so a transcript is something that can be easily translated to be read in other languages. We know there are people with hearing disability who browse our site this is a friendly version for them where they can read and understand what's there in this video.
This transcript is copyright - Search Engine Genie.
Feel free to translate them but make sure proper credit is given to Search Engine Genie
Labels: Mattcutts, Mattcutts Video Transcript, Video Transcripts, Videos
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