Alt Tags, Table Summaries - still important?

Hi all,
Would you say that it is (still) important to place your keywords in the alt tags and table summaries?

Thanks

 

Yes.

I am not sure about table summaries, but ALT text for sure.

Not only for searche engines, but for usability. ALT tags should be descriptive, with keywords in them.

One example of the importance in usability for ALT tags is people who use software that reads the webpage to them, specifically I've gotten a couple instances of blind people searching the internet and since they can't see the image the software reads the ALT text to them thus giving them an idea of where to go. I am sure there are other good examples of the usability of ALT text as well.

 

Ok, and if the act of making sites more accesable also happens to boost my site's ranking then all the better!

 

The only alt tag that will help you with Google is the alt tag on an image link. Google use these as anchor text. But while usability and other reasons dictate that you should use descriptive alt tags on all images, Google ignores then all except the ones used with links.

I'm not familiar with table summaries but I've been reading and working in this field for 5 or 6 years I have never heard anyone suggest using them to influence or please the SEs.

 

I have gotten in the habit of adding table summeries ... mostly because Tidy complains that your page is not W3/HTML complaint if it is not there ... and I like my pages to be clean.

However, I did a test about 6 months ago where I put a fairly unique phrase as the table summary on my top level home page (do a view source on that page if you want to see what a table summary looks like) which is PR7. Google never "found" the keyword - I left it in for over a month and this page is crawled a couple of times a week and I normally see "results" that quick.

So my conclusion was that table summary keywords aren't factored in ... at least for now.

alek

 

hmmmmm well the reason I asked it I found mention of this on this site.

I guess it doesn't hurt, right?

 

Yea, I don't think it would hurt, but again, at least in my testing a while back, Google didn't seem to pick it up. It's fairly easy to test, so if someone else does, I'd be curious to know if they get different results and/or if things have changed.

alek

P.S. In that article, they have a table showing how much Page Rank you need to "beat" so many web pages - that looks a bit over-simplified to me.

 

well maybe when google does count it someday we'll be able to see a "allintablesum:keyword" or the like type search?

is there a list of these special searches somewhere? (i.e. allinurl: allintitle: etc.)
I haven't looked but as soon as I post this I will.

----edit----
found it at Google's Advanced Search Operators

 

Google sometimes uses the text in the alt tag for a linkable graphic. It changes from time to time.

 

alt tag on an image is a must have for your website content SEO.
But I've never hreard table summaries. not for sure.

 

Alt tag is important but I am not sure about table summaries.