Does anyone think the <figcaption>attribute from HTML5 will have any influence for image search?</figcaption>

[RankSurge]

There is a

<figure>element that is supposed to provide better descriptions of image on the web in HTML5 - do you think that will replace the importance of the "Alt" tag?

Link to figcaption description

</figure>

[AlanMosley]

Good answer.

If i were a search engine, and some one searched for a blue widget, i could return a page that mentions a blue widget and has an image, that maybe of a blue widget. Or i could return your page that has a image marked up with HTML5, and microdata telling me that the image is in fact of a blue widget along with all the other details you can mark up with microdata and html5 telling me that the page has a lot of information about blue widgets, i know whitch one i would return to the user.

[JGar-28032]

It's a little difficult to tell right now (and even if they do, to what extent).

They are also pushing schema.org a bit themselves along with the other SE's, so I think (and am currently betting) that they would use this info instead, or with more priority.

The Schema.org tags allow you to get specific with not only the item (an image) but with it's context as well (an image of the author, or an image of a specific product, broken down by type, and so on).

It's all still in dev and about the only thing I've read from Google regarding its impact is along the lines of:

"We aren't saying it will increase your rankings. But this stuff will help us better catalog the Interwebs, which will help us better serve the users who search in our SE."

One could infer that Google ranks sites that are better for users higher, and so this would impact it. But you know how they are their official responses.