Free checker · SEO and Visibility
Image Alt Text Checker.
This free image alt text checker fetches a web page and lists every image on it with the alt text it carries. It separates missing alt from deliberately empty alt, flags filenames pasted in as descriptions and keyword-stuffed strings, and checks for the width and height attributes that stop the page jumping as it loads.
The page is fetched once, read, and thrown away. Nothing about the address you enter is stored.
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What this tool measures
This lists every image in a page's served HTML with the alt text it carries, and says which ones are wrong and why.
The advice everyone has heard — add alt text to every image — is wrong, and following it makes pages worse. A decorative image should carry an empty alt so a screen reader skips it; describing a border flourish out loud is worse than silence. So this separates a missing alt attribute from a deliberately empty one, and reserves its failures for the two things that are always failures: the filename pasted in as a description, and the comma-separated keyword list.
How to use it
Enter a page with real images on it — a portfolio, a product listing, an article. The home page of a site is often mostly CSS backgrounds, which carry no alt text at all and cannot, so it is a poor page to judge a site by.
Images added by JavaScript will not appear here, for the same reason they do not appear to a crawler on the first pass.
How to read the result
“Empty alt — treated as decorative” is a pass, not a warning. That is the correct markup for an image that carries no information.
“No alt attribute” is a failure because the fallback is worse than nothing: a screen reader announces the filename, so a visitor hears “I M G underscore 4 7 2 dot J P G”. On an image that is itself a link, it is worse still — the alt is the link's only anchor text, so without it the link is announced as a URL and carries no signal about where it goes.
The width and height finding is about layout rather than search, and it is the one most often dismissed. Without those attributes the browser cannot reserve space, so the page jumps as each image loads. That is Cumulative Layout Shift, it is a Core Web Vital, and it is the one most frequently failed by sites that are otherwise fast.
What to do next
Write alt text by asking what you would say if you were reading the page aloud to someone on the phone. If you would mention the image, describe it. If you would skip it, give it an empty alt. That test resolves nearly every case correctly and takes no expertise.
For images that carry information a paragraph could not fit — a chart, a floor plan, a price table as a picture — put the description in the page text where everyone benefits, and keep the alt short. Alt text is not the place for a paragraph.
Questions people ask
Should every image have alt text?
Every image should have an alt attribute. Not every image should have text in it. Informative images get a description; decorative ones get an empty alt so assistive technology skips them. Both are correct markup, and the difference is what most automated checkers get wrong.
Should I put keywords in alt text?
Only if they are what the image genuinely shows. Alt text is read aloud to people who cannot see the image, and a keyword list read aloud is hostile. It is also a recognised spam pattern. Describing the image accurately usually includes the relevant words anyway.
How long should alt text be?
Long enough to convey what the image adds, usually well under 125 characters. Some screen readers truncate around there. If the image needs more, the extra belongs in the page text.
Do CSS background images need alt text?
They cannot have it — there is no alt attribute on a background. That is a reason to use a background only for decoration. Anything meaningful should be a real image element so it can be described and indexed.
If you are in the UAE
Alt text is usually one line on a longer list. GoDesign's SEO service works through the whole list for UAE sites from Dubai, as a one-off technical fix or an AED retainer.
SEO services at GoDesignWhere to go from here
- Google Crawler Simulator — The same page's text and links as served, before rendering.
- Meta Tag and Open Graph Checker — The social share image and the rest of the head.
- SEO Audit Checklist — Where image checks sit in a full audit.
The guide behind this tool
Built by GoDesign FZE, who design and build sites in Dubai.
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