Image alt text is the written description carried in an image’s alt attribute — the words a page supplies so an image’s purpose and content survive when the picture itself cannot be seen.
| Term | Image Alt Text |
|---|---|
| Category | Structured Data, Social and Media |
| Also known as | Alt Attribute, Alternative Text |
| Where it appears | Content Report → Images and image factors |
What it means in RankGear
In the Content Report, RankGear inspects the images each analyzed page embeds and records whether they carry alt text, then lines your target page up against the pages already ranking for the query. It reads the alt attribute straight from the page markup rather than inferring anything about the image file, so what you see reflects what the page actually declares. The aim is not to grade your wording — it is to show, across the ranking cohort, whether describing images is common practice for this term and whether your page keeps pace or leaves images undescribed.
How to interpret it
Read alt text as a presence-and-fidelity check, not a score. First confirm the attribute exists on images that carry meaning; a decorative spacer legitimately takes empty alt, but a product photo or diagram that ranking pages describe and yours leaves blank is a real gap. Then check that the text describes what is genuinely in the image and visible on the page, rather than stuffing keywords or asserting claims a visitor cannot verify. If most ranking pages describe their content images and yours does not, treat that as a fixable inconsistency worth closing — not as evidence that alt text moves rankings.
Example
You run a Content Report for “raised garden bed kit” and open the images view. Nine of the top ten pages give their main product images descriptive alt text; your draft has three product photos with the alt attribute empty. The report flags the missing descriptions on your row. You write plain, accurate alt text for each — naming the material and configuration a visitor sees — then re-run to confirm your row now matches the cohort.
Important considerations
- Alt text should describe content the visitor can actually see; wording that introduces claims absent from the image or the page invites misleading descriptions and, for assistive technology, a worse experience than an empty attribute.
- Its primary job is accessibility — communicating an image when it cannot be rendered or seen — and that value stands regardless of any search consideration.
- Alt text is a page-authoring convention, not a Google ranking input. A cohort of ranking pages using it is a comparative indicator of common practice, not proof the attribute causes the rankings.
- Coverage across the ranking set is a provider-scale comparison — use it to spot where your page is out of step, not as an absolute quality mark.
Related terms
Part of the RankGear glossary · how RankGear measures · the 870 factors.