Alt tags

[phiar]

Is it true that without alt tags on your images that the se's spiders won't pick up your site?
--mainly because they don't read images but text.

--Phia

[Dan0]

Only if you don't have any text on your site. Of course, if you don't have any text, I don't think using ALT text is going to help much.

[Hope]

the alt attribute is intended to assist people who have images turned off, those who cannot see, and those who use a text browser. It is intended to provide a description of the image for the user. Some search engines read these, but I don't know that there is much weight on them.

[g1smd]

Search engines are interested in:
<title> tag
meta description
<h1> to <h6> tags
alt attribute text on <img> tags
title text on anchors (like <a title="a link" href="foo"> for example)
amongst other things.

[Dan0]

I assume you would include "the text on the page" as one of the other things they consider. :D

It's not necessary to use ALT text for anything other than its intended purpose, which Heidi has already described.