Image Alt Text
Image alt text is a short written description of a picture, added to the image's code, that says what the picture shows. Google calls it the most important extra detail you can add to an image. It helps people who use screen readers or can't load images, and Google reads it, along with the page, to understand the picture.
Source: Google Search Central, Google image SEO best practices, checked October 29, 2026
What Image Alt Text means for your business
Google's guide asks for alt text that's useful and fits the page, with keywords only where they belong. Its own example moves from "puppy" to "Dalmatian puppy playing fetch." Say you're a roofer. A crew photo might say "Crew replacing shingles on a steep roof" instead of a file name or a string of keywords. Google warns that stuffing keywords into alt text can make a site look like spam.
Alt text matters more when the image is a link. Google's link guide says it uses the alt text of a linked image as the link's words. So a logo or a button made from a picture, with the alt text left empty, is a link that tells Google nothing about where it goes.
Alt text describes a photo. It isn't the place for a whole menu or price list. If your logo, buttons and photos were uploaded with no descriptions at all, we'd fill them in as part of a site clean-up.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview cited SEO tool and agency blogs, a Facebook page and university accessibility guides, not Google's image guide, and gave a character limit Google's guide doesn't set. ChatGPT cited no sources and showed sample photos with sample alt text.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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