Google Doesn’t Care What’s In An Image - Search Engine Journal

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Google’s web search algorithm doesn’t care what’s in an image. All that matters is it’s marked up with the correct structured data.

Whether it’s an award-winning photograph, or a blank square, it’s all the same in terms of the SEO value it adds to the page.

This is discussed during the Search Central SEO hangout with Google’s John Mueller recorded on October 22.

A site owner named Andrew Sychev joins the Q&A to ask Mueller about using placeholder images in conjunction with lazy loading.

Sychev has his site set up to load images further down a page as grey squares until a visitor starts scrolling.

When a visitor gets closer to where the image is located on the page, the grey square is replaced with an actual photo.

This is done to improve page speed and to prevent a page from shifting around in a visitor’s browser, which may happen when a bunch of images are loaded all at once.

Since Googlebot doesn’t interact with web pages, and therefore won’t see the images, Sychev asks if there’s any harm in using this set up.

While this question relates to using lazy loading as a way of improving cumulative layout shift (CLS), the answer given by Mueller applies to SEO in general.

Would using your own photos add more SEO value to a page than using generic stock...

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