Your Image's Location Signals = Future Ranking Factor
If you've been working with Advanced Image Optimization
Strategies then you already know the importance of your images' EXIF data. EXIF
(aka Exchangeable Image File) is the extra photo identifying information that's
inside jpg images, which includes: date, time, shutter speed, exposure, F number, and
when a photo is taken with devices such as a smart phone it can also include exact GPS information.
We've talked about the importance of understanding the roles this specific image data plays for close to 4 years and if you're working on image optimization or are within the Local Search arena then we highly recommend you read our article The Webmaster's Guide to Advanced Image Optimization to get the in-depth research you need.
The really important piece of data in the EXIF data is Geolocation, because at some point (possibly soon) Google may use an image's Lat/Long as a location signal for local search rankings, image search, Google Maps, Google Earth, In-Car systems and everything else their team can think to do with images being indexed by location.
One of the reasons Google has not used this identifying information in its technology is that it comes with a serious privacy concern. Think about it...if every picture taken and posted online can be tracked to the exact lat/long it would be a stalker's fantasy. People would stop posting pictures of their children and so on. You get the point. To handle this issue, Facebook currently strips EXIF data, but allows users to Tag location if they wish.
The reason we're bringing this up is that we have another Cutts video in which he explains that EXIF data isn't currently an explicit ranking factor, but could be in the future. He makes a recommendation to include the EXIF data if it's already there, but that it's not important right now if it requires a lot of extra work.
We currently recommend using EXIF latitude and Longitude in images for local Web sites because if this data becomes a Local search signal in the near fu...
