@Keonda: No, so that’s one of the factors that can be clarified by a new test.

@Michael: I love to perform little tests like this and also like to read about them on other blogs. Let’s hope that it’s an inspiration for others to set up tests as well.

No test, no matter how valid its construction, provides a usable result if the test cannot be independently repeated and verified.

Because it’s so difficult to describe these tests without linking to the test sites (and believe me when I say I understand why that is necessary on so many levels), we have to be careful not to read too much into anything.

The greatest value of your test is in your sharing so that other people can attempt to construct similar tests. The more of these types of tests people create and share, the more likely that a consensus will form around the actual behaviors of the search engines rather than people’s individual experiences.

A bad thunderstorm can literally alter the effects of any SEO test.

1 test is just a start of a long process of study and sharing that, hopefully, leads to better understanding for all of us.

Its a nice testa altough its not a confirmation. Maybe this should be tested with several domains(existing and with new ones) with external links, other image formats. I will put this in my to do list. This is an interesting matter so let’s test it :-)

Erdal

@Whitespark: Thanks :)

@Luc: Although image links that point to external pages surely do pass value, I do expect Google to treat these links differently, just like they do with “regular” internal vs. external links. It is quite common to use image links (ie navigation) to other pages on your own website, but -besides banner ads- it’s less common to do this to external pages.

I have a website that ranks on the first page in google with a very competitive keyword (around 10 million results). There are nearly none textlinks with just this keyword. But there are hundreds of image links where the alt tag has this keyword. The ranking for this keyword is stable for about a year now.

I created I widget (an image) that visitors can use on their own website. Users can copy the optimized code from my website.

Now I try to rank well on anothor very very competitive keyword (67 million results) with the same technique. Since a few months, the site ranks on the second page in google.

The website is 1,5 year old and has a pagerank of 5. I have to conclude that optimized image links are well appreciated by Google ;)

If you need more info, please send me an email. I don’t want to disclose the website….