• Search Engine Journal, Monday, April 28, 2008 12:15 PM

Can Google analyze and rank photos as it does with text? Two of the company's scientists presented a paper at the International WWW Conference in Beijing last week that will allegedly remove Google's dependence on the alt text accompanying a picture, allowing the engine to rank images based solely on their content.

The process, called VisualRank, uses an algorithm that combines image-recognition software with techniques for determining which images look most similar to one another, resulting in a ranking that doesn't require text. If the process works, this could mean humans would no longer be required to provide metadata in order to describe photos to search engines.

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