In the last couple of weeks, we deployed a new website from the ground up and gutted 95% of all previous pages and content. It wasn’t hard to leave the old site behind as it was slow to load, site layout looks tired and it did not address the needs of their customers.
The site does not do any paid advertising, or paid placement other than being hyper focus on SEO. This led us to the question..
Does Google Search Bot recognize text in a picture?
There hasn’t been much discussion on whether the text in an picture is recognized by Google Search Bot, however we can conclusive say that Google does recognize text in an image. We know that Google does deploy optic character recognition (OCR) technologies in Google Books and Google Patents extensive to index the millions, if not billions of publications with ease. However recognizing text on a picture can be more difficult as the text is often on a background with lots of distracting elements, the text alignment might lean up/down, to various font size – and those are things that Google Search Bot does not have to worry about in a book, or a research article. Our discovery does indicate that Google does utilize OCR when crawling and indexing images for websites, and to a certain extend – does a good job reading it.
Does Google Search Bot recognize text in a picture and use it to rank websites?
Yes, Google OCR does recognize the text in an image and the Google search algorithm will use the text that was recognized in the image to rank a website for a specific search query. In the site that we helped deployed, we discovered that Google algorithm read the text within the image and used it as a factor to rank a page.
[Text in an image] + [Text within the content] = [Impact search ranking]
Case and Point
We noticed that we were getting traffic from a long tail keyword that we were not targeting, and not even something that’s on our radar as it’s a non-converting keyword. The intent of is to rank for Montrose property management for Apogee Properties, which we are ranking for but this query “Skanska Montrose” started driving traffic and floating this page up on Google SERP. After some investigation and scrubbing the site for potential reasons, we discovered that Google OCR is being utilized as it picked up some text in an image on that page and is being used by Google algorithm to rank that page for a specific query.
The query that lead to our conclusion is “Skanska Montrose”. The term “Skanska” was never part of the content strategy, nor was it in any text on the site that was written, but surprisingly the website ranked for “Skanska Montrose”. Skanska is a large construction company and they acquired a plot of land in Montrose.
The word “Skanska” can be only visually found in a picture on the page (URL to 2400×3600 pixel image: https://www.apogeetx.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/commercial-property-management-glass-lobby.jpg), while “Montrose” can be found as text content close to the footer of the page.
That the two words “Skanska Montrose” is not found in the content throughout the whole website.
Image that Google OCR identified read and Google Search indexed
Can you see the word “Skanska” in the image below? Look for the green car and to the right of it, you will find a building sign and that is where you will find Skanska.
It is what Google OCR identified and then merge it with the text of “Montrose” at the bottom under the part of the site called “Areas We Serve”.
Those two components of Google OCR identifying “Skanska” and the text “Montrose” on the content enable the website to rank on Page 1 / Position 9.3 for “Skanska Montrose”.
How can you use this information
Build your content strategy for people to read, not Google OCR and Google search bots. Those are fundamentals that will not change and you don’t have to chase the next Google Panda, Hummingbird, Core 3.0 algorithm update.
Brick and Mortar: It can be useful for companies that have a brick and mortar storefront. Your text of your company’s logo will help and potentially help with Google local search. Restaurants, having a menu will make it easier for Google OCR to index too..
Events: Companies with events, or conferences can benefit from this as the text within the images will help them in the long tail play.
Conclusion
This is relatively new that Google OCR is being used by Google search algorithm to influence page ranking. We believe that this will get more traction in the next couple of years but is not a strong signal that is used by Google’s algorithm. We suggest taking this learning, and then having it at the back of your mind when developing your content strategy. At the end of the day, focus on your customers and get the customers where they want to go with as little clicks as possible.
Drop us a note by commenting below to let us know if you have seen anything different.
