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  4. Will background images get indexed?

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Will background images get indexed?

Image & Video Optimization
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  • nans
    nans last edited by Mar 12, 2015, 7:58 AM

    Will images, loaded via css class, get indexed?

    For example something like :

    style="background-image: url(https://www.mysite.be/content/dam/homepage-mama.jpg/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.web.2000.9999.jpeg);"

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • vanGoGh-creative
      vanGoGh-creative Subscriber last edited by Sep 9, 2016, 5:26 AM Sep 9, 2016, 5:26 AM

      On my site there is a gallery made by images embedded as background images.

      Google doesn't see them. 😞

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • topic:timeago_earlier,about a year
      • KaneJamison
        KaneJamison @KaneJamison last edited by Apr 10, 2015, 5:13 PM Apr 10, 2015, 5:13 PM

        On a sidenote, if you want to prevent indexation of them you can probably add the URLs in to Robots.txt or disallow a specific folder for those images.

        On the flipside, if you want to get them indexed, you can manually link to the images and submit an image sitemap to google with just those particular images. Doing both is better than just one.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • KaneJamison
          KaneJamison last edited by Apr 10, 2015, 5:03 PM Apr 10, 2015, 5:03 PM

          Quick anecdotal reference - for the 1 site I just checked (which allows CSS to be crawled), no they are not indexed.

          However, Google crawls CSS and can load those images when you Fetch And Render inside of GWT I believe, so theoretically they can index them.

          Next question is what would cause them to do so (eg inbound links to that image file), but I don't have an answer for that.

          KaneJamison 1 Reply Last reply Apr 10, 2015, 5:13 PM Reply Quote 0
          • Dr-Pete
            Dr-Pete Staff last edited by Apr 10, 2015, 4:40 PM Apr 10, 2015, 4:40 PM

            Unfortunately, "can" and "will" are sometimes two different matters. Google is pretty CSS-savvy at this point, and I'm 98% sure they can index those images. If it's a background image, and depending on how it's set up, they may choose not to, but that's a bit trickier.

            Weird question, but do you want it indexed, or not?

            Asking around to see if there are any image-SEO experts who can provide a more data-driven answer.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • HashtagHustler
              HashtagHustler last edited by Apr 10, 2015, 12:03 PM Apr 10, 2015, 12:03 PM

              Nancy,

              Although I am saying this all based on my personal speculation I believe that they will be indexed. I do not know 100% if it will but Google has gotten much better at indexing Java/CSS. As far as if you want these to be indexed I would also take a look at Google's image guidelines for best practice and see if there is something of value in there.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • topic:timeago_earlier,29 days
              • Fuel
                Fuel last edited by Mar 12, 2015, 11:33 AM Mar 12, 2015, 11:33 AM

                Hi Nancy,

                This article might be of some assistance - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/25773047/what-will-be-indexed-better-in-search-engines-img-tags-or-background-images-wit 

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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