The EXIF Metadata contains plenty of useful information about your images. For instance the EXIF meta tags can tell use when a photograph was taken, which lens was used, what were the camera settings and, in some cases, even the location of a photo is available in the EXIF records.

The big question is if Google is using the EXIF tags for image search rankings (SEO)?

Peter Linsley, product manager for Google Images, earlier said:

I’m a huge EXIF fan, it makes perfect sense for the image itself to be able to carry pertinent metadata and we’re always looking at ways it could be used especially as adoption rises over the coming years.

Later Matt Cutts of Google also mentioned EXIF in one his Webmaster videos on how image only websites can improve their search rankings in Google with the help of EXIF tags.

In a more recent video, Matt said that Google reserves the right to use EXIF for ranking images. His suggestion is that if you are using pictures, it will help if you can keep the EXIF information embedded inside the images as that sort of information will help people find your images.

Related: Use Alt or Title Attribute with Images ?