image map

An image divided into logical areas, each of which has a hot spot.

A set of hyperlinks attached to areas of an image. This may be defined within a web page, or as an external file.

If the image map is defined as an external file, search engines may have problems indexing your other pages, unless you duplicate the links as conventional text hyperlinks.

If the image map is included within the web page, the search engines should have no problem following the links, although it's good practice to provide text links too, to aid the visually impaired and those accessing the web with graphics switched off or using text only browsers.

A Web page feature in which hyperlinks are assigned ("mapped") to different portions of a graphic image, thereby allowing users to access links by clicking with a mouse on the mapped areas. Note: Image map requests are processed by CGI scripts on the server.