Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Will background images get indexed?
-
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);"
-
On my site there is a gallery made by images embedded as background images.
Google doesn't see them.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Not using alt tags for decorative images?
Hi everyone, My coworker recently stumbled across this article that instructs you to not to alt text for "decorative images" as you might get penalized you for over optimization https://www.shopify.com/blog/7412852-10-must-know-image-optimization-tips Has anyone heard of this or have any thoughts?
Image & Video Optimization | | AliMac260 -
Would you recommend changing image file names retroactively?
We'll be optimizing file names moving forward, but it hasn't been done in the past. I have probably 1,500 that would need to be changed, so want to make sure it's a valuable use of time/worth the effort. 🙂 Also, has anyone used Media File Renamer for wordpress? Seems this would be a good way to rename files without needing to reupload everything. Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | jennafrye0 -
How long should the Image Alt Text be for SEO?
When it comes to creating the alternate text for images, what is the character length that I need stay under to rank well?
Image & Video Optimization | | Ytellsocial0 -
Is it a legal requirement for a website to have alt tags for all images?
Someone told me it is a legal requirement for a website to have alt tags on all of their images. Is this right? Or is this bad for SEO?
Image & Video Optimization | | RachelBev0 -
Moving Images to Subdomain: SEO Impacts
For sever work- load enhancements we are planning to move our images to a sub-domain. so the files would be located at something like images.domain.com Rather than domain.com/images/ We are a large Ecommerce site so we have a lot of images. These will be self hosted so we are not using a CDN. I'm hoping someone has done the same and if there were any steps they had wished they had taken before making the move/ if they noticed any traffic impacts things like that.
Image & Video Optimization | | RMATVMC0 -
Can you get rich snippets for Youtube hosted videos?
My website has several videos, mostly product reviews and tutorials. I'd like for these videos to show in the SERPs with rich snippets, but I am hosting them through Youtube. What is your experience with Youtube hosted videos? Do they generate rich snippets? Or will Google always rank the Youtube video over your web page?
Image & Video Optimization | | TMI.com1 -
Metadata stored in images read by search engines?
Does anyone know if metadata stored in images is read by search engines?My company stores images in digital asset management systems and metadata keyword tags are added to the images, so they can easily be found within the system. Since these keywords are stored in the image file, I was wondering if search engines can read them once the image is placed on the website, but I'm not finding any evidence of this in my research.
Image & Video Optimization | | unitedairlines0 -
Dynamic image serving SEO
We often use images from a dynamic image server, to cater for image asset management, multiple sizes etc. Similar to Adobe's Scene7, although that came out after we chose our product. So widgets.com may have all its images with a URL like myimageserver.com?src=widgets/catalogue/productname.jpg;width=100;height=100;angle=90, instead of widgets.com/images/productname.jpg. A potential client wants to capitalise on traffic from Google image search. We could build an image sitemap, listing the images on each page. What should we place in the image:loc field? The code: myimageserver.com?src=widgets/catalogue/productname.jpg;width=100;height=100;angle=90 Apparently we have to verify the hosting site in Webmaster Tools, but I can't see where. I have a single Webmaster Tools account, where most of our sites are defined. Would I have to verify it for each site using the dynamic imaging program? Love to hear from anyone with solutions for getting images indexed when they are hosted at third-party dynamic imaging programs.
Image & Video Optimization | | ozgeekmum0