Google indexes pictures all wrong.
Here at ongoing, I used to store all my own pictures
with nice names I invented on the spur of the moment. Sometime last year, I
realized my cameras were thoughtfully giving each shot a nice
guaranteed-unique name, so I just started using that; for example,
that slug is in
a file named IMG_2663.jpg.
But, I’m careful to always supply an appropriate alt text, like so: <img alt='Vancouver slug' src='IMG_2663.png' />.
It turns out that Google pretty much ignores the alt text, which is
irritating, so
you’ll find my roses and prairiescapes and Foo Campers in Google only with a
lot of effort.
What’s really weird is that Google does put a lot of weight
on the actual file-name.
The reason I noticed this is that in any given week, the most popular image
on ongoing is the picture of Diablo found
here, apparently because
it’s in a file called diablo.jpg. But you know, there are lots
of pictures of Diablo out there, and not that many of
the chapels at Brussels
Airport.
So, Google could do a lot better here.
[Note: I’m talking about Google
image search here, not regular search.
It’s still broken.]
