Google soon to read text in graphics?
 

Apparently Google has filed for a patent on reading text in images. Will be interesting to see how this turns out. I would imagine this would vastly change the serps and the method behind them.

If you want a boring read on it, here ya go. :D

Maybe this will help in my PPC. I was bugging my Adwords rep awhile ago about how screwed up their QualityScore bot is when trying to calculate minimum bids.

Most paysite tours are all graphics, and the one I was arguing about was all flash. The bot couldn't find anything interesting except for the NetNanny & 2257 links.

I've been reading this since about 1999. It's the equivalent of putting OCR on a bot. How realistic is that?

Sit and wait for it if you want to go broke. Or carry on working and grab it if and when it ever gets here. Hey, if you're in your teens, it may happen during your working life, who knows?

Imagine the processing overheads.

Hi, yeah the text would have to be pretty clear against the background of the image, and the font style etc. The more I think about it the less important it seems, why not just use a tag to describe the text that resides within an image.

cheers.

Exactly. And all that work for what? You get a sports site and pull out advertising from the pictures. Not particularly relevant.

I would guess that it would just recognize the largest text in the most relevent areas of the site. It might not take much processing power if it could only captured a handful of the largest, clearest words. Just a thought.

I wouldn't expect something like this in the near future, OCR is a real resource hog.

Google tends to try to patent everything they come across, trying to keep and build new monopolies whereever possible.