One SEO professional asked John Mueller over on Twitter about something being a ranking factor.
Their question was: These icons (they referred to thumbs up and thumbs down icons) in their pros and cons section were showing as images without alt text.
At least, according to the tool SEO Minion.
They were wondering if something like this is harmful for their site? Is this a factor affecting their rankings?
John explained that, for what it’s worth, it’s possible to do something in SEO without it being an actual ranking factor.
In other words: while you can set priorities for certain tasks from an SEO perspective, it is still possible to accomplish something in SEO without Google considering it as a ranking factor.
For what it's worth, you can do something without it being a ranking factor.
— 🐝 johnmu.xml (personal) 🐝 (@JohnMu) June 16, 2022