Over on the Bing blog, Todd Schwartz is offering up some tips on optimizing your photos and graphics for image search. Schwartz says that Bing’s top image developer recommends the following:
- Name image files appropriately – For improved relevance, make sure that the file name describes the image appropriately.
- Alternative image text (alt text) matters – For increased optimization, make sure photos are properly described with alternative text tags, and ensure that test within any images is also
- Watch frame breaking – Sites that attempt to break frames make it more difficult for the image to display correctly within search. Make sure you’re testing your site against the search engines.
Wondering how important image search is? Schwartz addressed that very question as a panelist at the Image Search session at SES San Jose a few weeks back. He shared image search data from comScore for June 2009. Over 60 million searches produced more than 1 billion image searches. So yeah, I’d say that image search is pretty darn important.
What say you? Leave your thoughts on image search in the comments below.