Image naming

This might seem like an irrelevant question (and probably is for the most part), but it's coming up for me quite often, so I figured I'd see what people think.

Mostly relevant when you have multiple pages of the same type that follow the same pattern, i.e. review pages.

For example, a review that covers a sportsbook has sections that repeat across multiple pages, depending on your content it might be something like "Mobile App" , "Live Odds", "Live Streams" and so on.

You will probably want to make your content richer by adding images, so in the beginning of the "Mobile App" (again, this is just a hypothetical pattern) you will have an image that summarizes the app's features. You will call that something like "mobile app features".

Now, on other similar pages in the same section you will have a similar image that's also called "mobile app features" for that app.

These are effectively two different images placed on two different pages that talk about two different apps. But since Google (although I am not entirely sure that's the case) doesn't actually analyze the image itself - would it appear as if you have the same image on all pages?

Stuffing things with keywords is not a good idea, but would it possibly be a better idea to add the brand into such similar image names? Something like "brandx mobile app features". Or does the fact that this image is displayed on a page devoted to a given brand serve as a strong enough indication that the image is related to that brand?

Depending on the site, I use keywords for image names, the keyword for the page in alt text and reuse them on multiple pages. This is not the best practice but it works and most of the time google understands the content (as long as it is good).

I'd be using the brand on individual pages with text/naming that's relevant to the page (or section) topic.

eg on a bet365 review page...under the 'app' or 'mobile betting' heading, the image might be named simply 'bet365-mobile-app'

but on a Bet365 live betting page...it might be named something like ' bet365-live-betting-interface-on-mobile' or (in your case) 'bet365-mobile-app-features-for-live-betting' (or something a bit better than that with a little more thought)

Good question about how G treats them if they're all the same. But my theory would be that it's a page that ranks as opposed to a site (well, you know what I mean, in the detail the statement isn't entirely true), so it's individual pages they're looking at and not (from that aspect) concerned if you have the same image with the same name on another page.

However...search engines no doubt have the ability to spot duplicate images (and take whatever relevant action they deem fit around them). So, if you were hopeful of ranking images in image search (for or relevant to the search term(s) of your page), I'd have said that it would seem sensible for all to be unique and have unique naming. It would be logical to think that duplications wouldn't hurt any written pages rankings, though, but I think the only truly accurate answer on that would come from controlled tests, and I'm not aware of anyone in SEO circles ever testing this particular aspect.

**I'm hoping I followed the question well enough that this is a suitable answer. Apologies if not.

I do the same as Chaumi and add the brand name 'bet365-mobile-app' etc.

I'm pretty certain google can tell the difference between two different images. It can see the dimensions, image type (JPG, PNG, GIF, etc.) and file size. Whether it can analyse an image I'm not sure but it definitely knows the difference between two non-identical images even with the same name.

Of course rich alt text helps as well.

I'd suggest it would be safe to assume (and be nigh on 100% confident in that assumption) that the algorithm (or whatever technical part of it handles image crawl, recognition, analysis, storage, and ranking/display) can analyse very effectively what an image is visually showing, in addition to the stuff Mattbar mentioned. Certainly for both G and B.

Are you speaking in terms of the "image name" ( mobile_app_features.webp ) or are you speaking in terms of the "alt tag" or the "title tag"?

The days of keyword stuffing alt tags and title tags are long since gone. I usually use an alt tag that defines what the image is, and at times this will be a game name or operator name if that matches.

If someone has images turned off or uses a screen reader which is what al tags are supposed to be used for, it seems that using a lot of keywords would appear as spam where as an actual description of what the image is seems more logical, and it could easily have a keyword or 2 in it.

Whether google is still ranking alts and titles higher keyword wise could be debated but I would hope that is not the case.

/side note Trying to rank in image search might work selling products, but IMO those searching for "Cleopatra slot image" are predominantly affiliates too lazy to create the image and would rather just steal it.

Rick
Universal4

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PaulEchere

But since Google (although I am not entirely sure that's the case) doesn't actually analyze the image itself - would it appear as if you have the same image on all pages?

---

It definitely does analyse the image itself. You can pop up an image without any kind of alt text and it will often be able to identify what it is and show you similar images.

Eg: if you add an image of a red car but don't identify it with any text (eg: 1.jpg not alt text etc..) and do a google image search, google can tell it's a red car and show you other red cars.

On top of this, google is able to read the text in an image using OCR. Here some info from the horses mouth, but it's actually about gmail: https://support.google.com/a/answer/6358855

Some info on it in search: https://www.techwyse.com/blog/search...xt-in-images/#