Google Using Your Title Tag as 'Captions' in Images Search Results

Last year Google added badges to their image results. Next they added the domain URL to show where the image was coming from. Last month they added captions that show the title of the web page where each image is published.

According to Google, adding captions...

...gives you more context so you can easily find out what the image is about and whether the website would contain more relevant content for your needs.

Below is a side-by-side comparison of the old display and the new. Notice the images on the right side display the page titles in their captions:

The rollout of this feature is worldwide but captions will be displayed only on mobile browsers and the Google app (iOS and Android).

One might wonder why Google wouldn't use the Image Alt tag or the image's actual caption whenever available before defaulting to the title of the web page. After all, it's easy to predict that some images will be labeled with some very odd "captions" as a result of this one-size-fits-all approach to labeling all images on a single page with the same caption.

In any case, one must now consider how a page's title tag will relate as a caption for the page-images within Google's image-search results.

For tips on image selection and optimization, see these SEN resources: