alt text vs title text

Its a lesser-known HTML thing, but "tooltips" on images should be "title" tags, not "alt" tags. Although, IE does display the contents of alt tags as tooltips.

Nonetheless, all the search engine help generally talks about using text in alt tags. What about the technically correct "title" tags? Does anyone know if search engines key off those?

Thanks,
Mike

Mike, title tags are definitely a good idea, but bear in mind that Google will not use them at all for images unless the image forms part of a link.

Gringo.

But it will use the 'alt' tag for images, correct?

use alt tags for image

i use both - if just for accessibility. opera uses titles, ie uses alt

If the images are not links, no.

Gringo.

Do you then recommend linking the images back to the same page?

For example; I have one picture on a fairly static page with an alt tag containing the keyword phrase for that page. If I link that image to the same page the image is on, will it be used by google. or is that SPAM?

To be honest I don't know if a link to the same page will count or not - somehow I doubt it. I do know that the alt text will not count at all if the image is not part of a link. This has been part of the algo for the last 2 or 3 months.

Gringo.

May i ask, how do you know this? documents published? just experience? testing?

Thanks, Gringo.

I don't mean to sound disrepectful or anything, but how do you know that?

Thanks,
Mike

Experience and testing ...

Do this search ...
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22image+below+cannot+be+displayed%22

Then this one ...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22image+below+cannot+be+displayed%22+passes

Gringo.

Gringo, very cool - thanks for that!

Cool -thanks Gringo.

Mike

Don't mean to sound stupid but alt tags only matter if the image is a links is this correct?

Take care,

Simon

That is what Gringo proposes. And he knows what he is talking about.