Alt tag text?

I was reading here recently that alt tag text is relevant
to google, as it will look at the text in its algorithm?
Is this still the case, or was it ever the case?

I have been playing around a bit trying to find
sites based on their alt text and it doesn't seem
to carry any significance at all, or does it work
in the same as anchor text, i.e. it has significance
for the site it is linking to.

I would be interested to know, because I have a
few quite small keywords that I would like to
have my website rank with, but I don't
want them to actually appear on my site,
and I think having some image, and "stuffing"
them in the alt text might be a good
solution. Or does anyone know any other way
of doing this.

Also does google penalise text on your site in
a small font, because I thought I might put the
keywords down at the bottom in small writing.

Would appreciate any thoughts.

there are rumours going around recently that google is now considering alt tags, the size of the image and where it actually links to.

i have always used alt tags and will continue to, google will add your images to images.google.com when you have alt tags...

i would caution you not to relate incorrect alt tags with the wrong picture

ie. having the alt tag of : online casino website : on a picture of a cat...

Alts on images are good - Must use

I query incorrect alt tags on wrong picture - could thewatcher explain a little here please?

Keywords at bottom of page are almost useless and if you have them in the same colour as the background it is spamming - some people change the colour by a small fraction but I have a feeling that google picks those up too

I always use ALT tags because they are still used by Google's image search and other search engines. However, Google itself does not take into account ALT tags unless the image is also a link to another page.

Gringo.

and remember to use relevant text - keywords - in the links

Yahoo use alt tags in a big way, most of mine are even part of the description under my Yahoo listings (the google supplied ones).

DON'T SPAM THEM!

It's amazing how as soon as you tell someone a ranking feature they go and keyword stuff it ....

IH

don't kill the golden goose...

thewatcher

Could you explain from your statement above please:

"alt tags on wrong picture"

Alt text and Title text are very useful for people who choose not to display images or are using a text only browser, as well as visually impaired people who use screen readers.

On top of that it is sometimes helpful to have a descriptive title for an image or link.

Generally speaking in my experience the Spiders do not seem to pay much attention to the alt and title text but they do no harm to your pages to use them (for their intended purpose), and they can help to increase the usability of your site (which can only be a good thing ).

Future tweaking of seach engines may one day mean that they do place a greater emphasis on the alt and title text in which case you wouldn't want to be caught napping, but for now, although I would strongly recommend using them to every webmaster I wouldn't say that there would be any measurable SEO benefit at the moment.

Bear in mind however that any usability improvement increases the accessability of your site and that could increase the conversion ratio of vistors to customers which can be just as important for some sites as moving a few positions up the rankings!

Absolutely correct

Competition is improving at the same rate as knowledge