Google On Text Within Images

Jan 17, 2024 - 7:31 am 4 by

DO YOU WANT GOOGLE TO SEE THIS TEXT?

A recent post on Reddit asked about the impact of having a website where most of the text was within images. Would Google be able to read the text, what is the SEO impact and would the text rank in the search results?

This is a topic we have not covered in a long time so I figured I'd cover it again.

In short, if you want to do SEO right, make sure the text is on the page and not within an image. There are even some old-fashioned techniques, with new ways, to make sure the text looks like it might be in a graphic.

Worse case, you can use alt tags on images so Google can understand the image and the text in that image. Google used to allow image replacement text techniques, as well.

John Mueller from Google replied to that Reddit thread and said, "You could also be pragmatic - is it just the same text as you already have in text form (eg your company name & address), or is it actually something substantial that would be missing from your site if the images weren't there?"

In short, if this is important text that is unique to that page - then you might want it to be real text and not an image.

Forum discussion at Reddit.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Search Video Recaps

 
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: August 29, 2025

Aug 29, 2025 - 10:00 am
Search Video Recaps

Search News Buzz Video Recap: Google Spam Update, AI Mode Changes, ChatGPT Does Use Google, Search Ad News & More

Aug 29, 2025 - 8:01 am
Google Updates

Google August 2025 Spam Update Impact Felt Quickly

Aug 29, 2025 - 7:51 am
Bing SEO

Bing Webmaster Tools Sitemaps Index Coverage Button Missing For Some

Aug 29, 2025 - 7:41 am
Google

Google Tests Rounded Search Results Snippet Design Again

Aug 29, 2025 - 7:31 am
Google Maps

Google NMX Business Profiles May Show New Profiles Button

Aug 29, 2025 - 7:21 am
 
Previous Story: Google Search Not Showing News Boxes For Some Election Queries