**Alt text is the written description of an image — what screen readers announce, what engines read, and what shows if the image fails to load.** This check looks at how well your images are covered by descriptive alt text. Missing or empty alt text leaves screen-reader users and engines with no idea what an image conveys, while decorative images should be explicitly marked as such.
It checks how completely and well your images are described with alt text. Specifically:
- Coverage — whether meaningful images have an alt attribute at all.
- Descriptiveness — whether the alt text actually conveys the image's content or purpose, not just a filename.
- Decorative images — whether purely decorative images use empty alt (alt="") so screen readers skip them.
Good coverage with descriptive alt text passes; some images missing or with poor alt text is a warning; widespread missing alt text is a fail.
GEObubbly checks the page's images for the presence and quality of alt text. It's a core, scored Security & HTML Quality check that runs directly against the page's image markup.
The alt attribute provides a text alternative for an image, and it does three jobs. For accessibility, screen readers announce the alt text so blind and low-vision users know what an image conveys — without it, they hear nothing useful or just a filename. For search, alt text gives engines context about the image (helping it appear in image search) and contributes to the page's overall topical understanding. And for resilience, alt text displays in place of an image that fails to load. The key is matching alt text to the image's role: meaningful images (a product photo, an informative diagram) need concise, descriptive alt text that conveys what they show; decorative images that add nothing informational should use empty alt (alt="") so assistive tech skips them rather than reading out clutter. Avoid keyword-stuffing alt text — describe the image honestly. This is both a core part of accessibility and a small but real SEO signal. For GEO, alt text is how an AI engine understands what's in your images, which matters as engines increasingly reason over visual content.
Alt text (the alt attribute) is a written description of an image that serves several purposes: screen readers announce it so users who can't see the image understand what it conveys, search engines read it for context about the image and the page, and it displays in place of the image if it fails to load. Good alt text concisely describes what the image shows or its purpose in the page. It's a foundational accessibility feature and a modest SEO signal, making your images meaningful to people and engines that can't see the picture itself.
Describe the image concisely and accurately in the context of the page — convey what it shows or why it's there, as if explaining it to someone who can't see it. Keep it reasonably short, skip phrases like "image of" (screen readers already announce it's an image), and don't keyword-stuff: forced keywords make the alt text worse for users and can look manipulative. For a product, name the product; for a chart, summarise its key point. Match the description to the image's role on the page, so it adds genuine meaning rather than just listing a filename.
Meaningful images carry information the user needs — a product photo, an informative diagram, a chart — and they require descriptive alt text so that information is available to everyone. Decorative images are purely visual and add no information, like background flourishes, dividers or stock imagery that just sets a mood; these should use empty alt (alt="") so screen readers skip them rather than reading out distracting clutter. Deciding which an image is comes down to one question: if the image were removed, would the user lose any information? If yes, it's meaningful; if no, it's decorative.
Yes, modestly. Alt text gives search engines context about what an image depicts, which helps your images appear in image search and contributes to the page's overall topical understanding. It's not a heavy ranking factor, and it should never be keyword-stuffed, but accurate, descriptive alt text is a legitimate signal and a best practice. Its bigger value is accessibility — making images meaningful to screen-reader users — and the two goals align: honest, descriptive alt text serves users and engines alike, which is exactly what good image markup should do.
Yes. Alt text is the primary way an AI engine learns what an image contains, since it reads the text description rather than interpreting pixels in the way a person sees them. As AI engines increasingly reason over pages that include visual content, descriptive alt text ensures your images contribute to how your content is understood rather than being a blank to the engine. Providing accurate alt text makes your visual content legible to machines, supporting both accessibility and the comprehensiveness that helps your page be understood and cited.