Google Updates Image SEO Best Practices For Embedded Images

Google has made a small update to its image SEO best practices documentation, specific to the "Use HTML image elements to embed images" section. The update seems relatively minor but the changes to the wording was done for a reason.

This update was spotted first by Gagan Ghotra who posted about it on X, he said, "Google updates page about image SEO best practices."

What changed?

The Use HTML image elements to embed images section now reads:

Using standard HTML image elements helps crawlers find and process images. Google can find images in src attribute of img element (even when it’s a child of other elements, such as the picture element). Google doesn’t index CSS images.

It previously said:

Using standard HTML image elements helps crawlers find and process images. Google parses the HTML img elements (even when they’re enclosed in other elements such as picture elements) in your pages to index images, but doesn’t index CSS images.

Here is a side-by-side of the change:

Forum discussion at X.