After seeing that not having an Image Title does affect Google News articles, I contacted Big G to see if the WP forum moderator was correct when they stated that Image Titles don’t affect SEO.
They were shocked that that would even be said as Google relies on Image Titles, Alts & Descriptions to properly index.
This is what the WP mod said which made no sense. There’s got to be a way to revert back include Image Titles so they don’t disappear after inserting into post.
It’s an accessibility issue. You should not be relying on title attributes for important information as not all user agents access or render this attribute. If you need to relay important information to visitors, use the caption functionality.
I’m sorry (but not actually sorry) that the tooltip community has felt slighted by this one, but we won’t need to make a change. We made a choice, and this choice on the whole benefits all users and readers, not just those using screenreaders. How often have you moused over an image on a WordPress site and saw “IMG_1234”? One of the lamest things ever. Never again.
Tooltips can still be added by opening the Edit Image modal and inserting something into the title attribute box. The only change is that the “Title” field — which is the name of an image’s attachment page — does not populate the title attribute.