Ok, it's been speculated or hypothesized that it may be beneficial to add Alt attributes to some pics that are linking somewhere else.

I don't see this as harmful, but I have a more specific question about Alt's....

I have several thumb nail pics on my site where someone can click on them to see a larger picture. When they do, a new window opens up with the larger pic, then they can close it after they are done viewing.

Question is: Is this a situation where adding an alt attribute keyword be beneficial... or not a typical scenario to add one?

This is a keyword strategy but don't know if it applies to this kind of picture because it's not really linking to another site.. and not sure if it is even called linking since it opens to a new window.

Any advice, opinion or answer to this?

Thanks,

Webseeker

Add keywords to your alt tag but keep in mind that people blocking the images and surfing your site should not get an idea its all keywords and not info. Add something like Click to see full version of <keyword> so that it helps users as well as bots.

<pedantic>
That's alt attribute shabbir
</pedantic>
(pet hate btw, calling attributes tags)

It's accurate to say that alt attributes do help with rankings, they are treated in the same way as anchor text for linked images and as body content (seemingly) for unlinked.

The alt attribute text as shabbir points out is also rendered in place of the image to any user agent that does not display images, text browsers, screen reader etc so it should be a descriptive phrase for the target page including a keyphrase that the page is optimised for. On unlinked images it should be a sentence describing the image.

Thanks for the replies. I have been studying this hard for the last several days and know more now than before, so that's good!

Chris, even my webdesigner calls them tags too! He said in an eMail to me that "we as webdesigners forget the orig intention of the alt's".

Thanks for the help.

Webseeker

I know they do, I have one I work with who does.

But I think it's now done just to bug me though

Originally Posted by chrishirst

...they are treated in the same way as anchor text for linked images and as body content (seemingly) for unlinked...

When a part of linked images, ALT attributes are highly beneficial as they take the place for anchor text (as you said). However, when an image is unlinked, Google no longer picks up on its ALT text for ranking purposes. Other search engines, however, are likely to use ALT text differently, and as everyone has said its intended purpose is to be an alternative to images in a text-based browser (as archaic as that sounds).

you need to/can add the title attribute for further info such as link destination
bit vague in the w3c spec... trackermania.com.