Exploring Web Attributes Related to Image Accessibility and their Impact on Search Engine Indexing

Abstract The purpose of this study is to analyze how search engines index web content inserted in image attributes for alternative/complementary texts that favor web page accessibility. The study discussed the importance of optimizing websites to improve search tool indexing and explored how these engines index image attributes. We conducted empirical observations of tests carried out in a controlled environment, representing a typical image publishing website. The basis of the experiment lay in observing how content inserted in ALT attributes in elements of web page images was indexed. Data were collected first by observing the indexing of a page without any declared attributes. Then, we analyzed a page with all the properly declared attributes. The experiments were conducted using popular web search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, Bing and DuckDuckGo. We also used Search Engine Optimization (SEO) online verification tools for analyzing criteria relevant to search engine indexing. The hypothesis for this paper is that the ALT attribute is relevant to SEO, whereas the TITLE attribute is not. At the end of the study, we present details on how some search engines indexed content specific to alternative/complementary for images.