Alt Image tag text passed as anchor text?

[macnpaul]

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Bought the book "Search Engine Optimization" by Kristopher B. Jones a while back, and was having a quick read through yesterday and this statement puzzled me -

"Alt Image tag text is not passed as anchor text when linking from an image"

I always thought alt text on a linked image did pass as anchor text....?

[thebusiness]

Bought the book "Search Engine Optimization" by Kristopher B. Jones a while back, and was having a quick read through yesterday and this statement puzzled me -

"Alt Image tag text is not passed as anchor text when linking from an image"

I always thought alt text on a linked image did pass as anchor text....?

easy to test - just use some obscure alt text in an image, wait until the new page has been cached and then search for that phrase.

[accelerator]

I've never heard it being of anchor text, but it will obviously help the image rank in Google images which can then bring traffic to your site.

Make sure you use a title="" tag on images as well for Firefox.

Rgds

[Brendon]

Probably a typo, since alt text clearly is passed as anchor text by image links, although maybe not at full value.

[macnpaul]

Thanks everyone.

Not a typo, the paragraph opens with -

"If possible, avoid using images to link to other pages of your Web site."

and in the same paragraph -

"you lose the opportunity to attach descriptive link anchor text to that page."

[thebusiness]

Thanks everyone.

Not a typo, the paragraph opens with -

"If possible, avoid using images to link to other pages of your Web site."

and in the same paragraph -

"you lose the opportunity to attach descriptive link anchor text to that page."

I've seen that somewhere else, not sure where though? It's fairly easy to prove that theory wrong, as mentioned above, but the correct answer would be to use both wherever possible.
Alt text does pass anchor text - although as Brendon points out it may not be as powerful as raw text - simply because it is easier to manipulate in an image.