Image alt text: what AI reads instead of your photos
Product photos sell to people, but text-based systems read the alt text that describes each image. An image with empty alt says nothing to a shopping agent trying to match a product to a request, and Google recommends descriptive alt text for images too.
In short
- The product stays in Shopify Catalog, but assistants have less to match against when a shopper describes what they want.
- We did not see this among the catalogs we scanned, which makes it rare rather than unimportant.
- This one needs a human decision, so Endcap finds and groups it but does not write it for you.
Why this weakens matching
AI platforms cannot see a product image; they read its alt text. Images with empty alt are effectively invisible to a shopping agent matching a product to a request.
AI platforms cannot see an image; they read its alt text. An image with empty alt is invisible to a shopping agent trying to match the product to a shopper's request.
Describe what's in the picture, not your keywords
Good alt text is short and literal: the product, its color and the detail the photo shows. A list of keywords helps nobody and reads as spam. If you sell variants, describe the variant shown in that image.
Alt text is also accessibility: screen reader users hear it. That makes it one of the few fixes that helps shoppers, Google and AI systems at once, and it's quick to do in bulk with a template plus a review pass.
How to check it yourself
- Open a product in admin, click an image, and look at the alt text field.
- Our scan counts product images with empty alt text on your public pages.
- Write alt text that names the item and its key visible feature, e.g. "Black merino crew socks, cushioned heel".
The fix
Add descriptive alt text to every product image naming the item and its key attribute.
How Endcap handles this
Endcap finds and groups every product with this problem and links each finding to the Shopify document behind it, but it does not write this one for you. Finding every instance by hand means paging through the admin; the scan lists them together.
The fix touches a field we deliberately do not automate. Endcap only writes vendor, product type, description and the Shopify category, because those are the fields where a wrong value is visible and reversible. Prices, identifiers, publication state and status are decisions with consequences a tool should not be making on your behalf.
Common questions
Does every image need alt text?
Every product image should have it. Purely decorative theme images can stay empty, but product photos are content.
Can alt text be generated?
Yes, as a draft from the title and variant, then reviewed. Generic generated text like "product image" is no better than empty.
Source: Shopify documentation
Check your own store
Enter your Shopify URL and see whether the public products we can inspect show these problems. No install required for the first scan.