Are Gallery Text Fields (Caption, Description, etc) Searchable?

  • indiancreekfarm · Member ·

    Dear Fellow WordPressers.

    I’m building my first WP site, for our small New York farm, and have a puzzle regarding photo galleries. Here are a couple examples:
    Small (Farm) Things
    Meet the Farm Dogs

    The Search widget (see footer of any page) doesn’t seem to search any of the text I’ve entered into the Title, Alt, Caption, or Description fields for photos in these galleries. Are the galleries searchable?

    If galleries are NOT searchable, that would seem to argue against using the gallery function for any valuable content — which is to say, any content. One wouldn’t want to create a few dozen galleries over time, loading them with great visual and textual content, only to have them not searchable. That would leave only the option of inserting images one at a time into a post, and putting all text into the post itself. Pretty tedious to build, and sacrificing benefits of the gallery function.

    I guess a self-hosted solution would afford one the flexibility to develop searchable galleries, but as a small farm without IT resources (aside from my time) we don’t really have the interest or wherewithal to self-host. I’ve scoured the WP Forums and Support areas, and searched the web at large, but haven’t found an answer.

    My site is only half designed and styled, but before I go any farther with content development, I need to resolve this question about galleries.

    Many thanks for your thoughts.

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    Alt text is certainly searchable in image search on Search engines, but it looks like you are currently blocking them. Not sure what kind of impact this would have on WordPress.com search.

  • indiancreekfarm · Member ·

    @justjennifer — Thanks for the reply!

    You’re right, I am blocking search engines in Settings > Privacy, but only til the site is ready to launch in a couple weeks. Didn’t want placeholder content getting indexed.

    Nonetheless, the WordPress.com search widget IS able to search the site I’ve created, with the exception of content entered into galleries. Hence my anxiety about using the gallery feature.

    Are you saying that when you use the gallery feature, all the metadata you enter for those photos does indeed get searched by the WordPress search and outside searches?

    Thanks again.

  • justjennifer · Member ·

    I know that such data is picked up by Search Engines. I am not sure about WordPress.com search. Your own experience, however, seems to indicate that it does not. For a definitive answer, I’d ask Support directly http://en.support.wordpress.com/contact/ and point them at this thread.

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