For SEO... - Display Graphs in HTML5 or Image?

[BeytzNet]

Hi All,

Would you recommend displaying charts and graphs as images or HTML5 (highcharts etc.)?

Thanks

[AlexMcKee]

Great question. Search engines presently don't index highcharts or other graphs presented using HTML+JS combinations. However it can't index the information in images either, just the image itself.

Search engines have become increasingly sophisticated at indexing content rendered/presenting using Javascript so the day may well come when these charts do become indexed. Extracting information, especially structured information, from images is probably going to remain a harder problem to solve than traversing the DOM and interpreting the structure of the charts.

Another factor is the native format of the data. If you use a dynamic charting solution like highcharts to render data present in the document then search engines will already be able to index the table and access the data. That isn't going to be the case for images. So I would recommend, wherever possible, putting the data in the document as a HTML table and using Javascript to present this as a dynamic chart. This will also mean those folks who browse without Javascript enabled will get to see your data, albeit in a different presentation.