Glossary · Indexing and discovery
image placeholder
A transparent pixel, a data URI or a tiny SVG served where a photograph will be inserted later by script, usually by a lazy loader. To a reader of the delivered bytes, which is what a crawler is, the page has that many images and none of them are photographs.
What image placeholder means
A transparent pixel, a data URI or a tiny SVG served where a photograph will be inserted later by script, usually by a lazy loader. To a reader of the delivered bytes, which is what a crawler is, the page has that many images and none of them are photographs. Counting placeholders as images is a measurement error.
Terms this definition uses
Related terms in Indexing and discovery
Whether a page can be found and kept, separately from whether it can be fetched.
index coverage · canonical · noindex · X-Robots-Tag · orphan page · E-E-A-T · E-E-A-T proxies · topical authority · Soft 404 · case consistency · accessibility structure · landmark region · accessible name · skip link · main landmark · alt attribute · form control name · duplicate id · IndexNow · faceted navigation · thin content · duplicate content · near-duplicate · boilerplate · MinHash · shingle · dead anchor · placeholder content · alt text · EXIF
Questions about image placeholder
What is image placeholder?
A transparent pixel, a data URI or a tiny SVG served where a photograph will be inserted later by script, usually by a lazy loader. To a reader of the delivered bytes, which is what a crawler is, the page has that many images and none of them are photographs.
Which area of the glossary does image placeholder belong to?
Indexing and discovery: Whether a page can be found and kept, separately from whether it can be fetched.
← placeholder content · alt text →
See it in the full glossary · 668 terms across 19 areas.