Back in 2008, when Google first started indexing PDF files through OCR from websites to include it in your search results, it was a sigh of relief (and for some, alarm) for a lot of websites that insisted on uploading PDF files, whether it’s for academic purposes or to make things easier for people browsing their site. But it’s only now 7 years later that the images included in that particular format have now been indexed as well.
This change in Google’s indexing behavior means that when you search for a particular image, your results would now include those pictures that have been embedded in PDF files. But instead of the usual “View Image” or “View Webpage” options that you normally get when the results are from a website per se, this time, you’ll see a “View PDF” option. So if your uploaded PDF file includes a picture of you singing (and of course you put that in the caption), when people search for your name plus singing, chances are, that picture will pop up as well.
But really, if you want your images to be searchable and indexable, embedding it into a PDF file is probably not the best way of doing so. For one, some people are extremely careful when clicking on a random PDF, especially if it’s from a site that’s unknown, so you might not get a high click-through rate.
However, it is also adding another venue or platform for your images, so you can also test how images from PDF files would rank as compared to those from HTML pages. Google hasn’t made an official announcement yet regarding this, but it looks like a lot of people have already been getting PDF in their image results.
VIA: Google Systems
