Alt text is the short description attached to an image. On a product photo, it is the one place where you tell a machine in your own words what the picture shows, and Google says it reads alt text together with computer vision and the page text to understand an image.
- Alt text is your own description of a product photo, and Google reads it alongside what it sees in the image and on the page.
- An empty alt, a file name such as IMG_2381.jpg or a string of repeated keywords gives a machine nothing it can use.
- Good alt text names the product type, the material, the color and the one feature a shopper would mention, in under 125 characters.
- On Shopify you add it per image under Products, then the product, then the image and Add alt text.
Why does alt text matter for AI and not only for accessibility?
Alt text was filed under accessibility for years. That reason alone is enough to write it, since a screen reader reads it aloud to a shopper who cannot see the photo. The same words now do a second job. Google's image SEO guide says Google uses alt text along with computer vision and the content of the page to understand an image.
A vision model can describe a lot of what a photo shows. It can also take a suede upper for leather. Navy under studio light can pass for black. The alt attribute is where you settle that question yourself. Leave it blank and the machine keeps its own guess, and that guess can be wrong.
What does good alt text look like for a product photo?
Good alt text describes the product the way a shopper would describe it to a friend. It names the type of product first. Then it adds the attributes a buyer filters on, such as material, color or fit, and it stops. Shopify recommends keeping it under 125 characters.
| Alt text | What a machine gets from it |
|---|---|
alt="" |
No words from you, only what the machine can infer from pixels |
alt="IMG_2381.jpg" |
A file name with no product meaning |
alt="boots boots cheap boots" |
Repeated keywords that read as spam |
alt="Brown leather waterproof hiking boot, wide fit" |
The product type, the material and the feature a buyer asks about |
Each photo should say what that photo shows. A front view, a close up of the sole and the boot on a muddy trail are three different pictures, so they get three different descriptions. Paste one sentence onto all eight images and a machine has no way to tell them apart.
How do I add alt text to product images on Shopify?
Shopify gives every product image its own alt text field. Nothing in the admin makes you fill it in. These steps come from Shopify's help center for the desktop admin.
- In your Shopify admin, go to Products.
- Click the name of the product you want to edit.
- In the Media section, click the image to open the Preview media page.
- Click Add alt text, type your description and click Save alt text.
- Close the preview with the X and move on to the next image.
In the Shopify mobile app, open the product and tap the image. Tap Information, enter the alt text and tap Save. I would start with your ten best selling products, because those pages get the most visits.
What does this look like for a skincare brand?
Say you run a skincare brand on Shopify with 40 products. Each product has four photos, so the store has 160 alt fields. On a young store most of them are empty, since the theme never asks. The hero image of a vitamin C serum could read "Vitamin C serum in a 30 ml amber glass dropper bottle". The texture shot could read "Drop of clear vitamin C serum on a fingertip".
The third photo is the ingredient panel. Describe the panel in the alt text, and put the ingredients in the product description as real text. A machine reads text far more reliably than a photographed label.
At about one minute per image, the whole catalog takes an afternoon. No developer is needed, and the only real cost is an afternoon of patience.
Which mistakes should I avoid?
Keyword stuffing is the most common one, and putting the brand name on every image comes close behind. Describing the scene instead of the product is another. "Woman smiling outdoors" tells a buyer nothing about the jacket she is wearing. I would also keep prices, discounts and size charts out of alt text. Those change, and nobody remembers to update the alt text when they do.
Prices and specs belong in fields a machine can check and in your product structured data. Alt text is only one part of the product data an assistant reads. The fields that decide whether a product is considered at all, such as identifiers, weights and categories, are covered in why AI skips your products. Image based search is its own topic, and visual product search explains it.
When the alt text is done, a free scan of your store reads the structured data and text of five key pages and lists what to fix next, in order.
Questions people ask
Is alt text only for accessibility?
Alt text serves screen readers first, and that is reason enough to write it. It also gives search engines and AI systems your own words for what a product photo shows. Google says it uses alt text together with computer vision and the page content to understand an image.
What makes alt text good for AI?
Good alt text names the product type and then the attributes a buyer filters on, such as material, color and fit. It stays under 125 characters. Each photo gets its own description, and file names or repeated keywords give a machine nothing to match.
Where do I add alt text on Shopify?
In the Shopify admin, go to Products and click the product. Click the image in the Media section, then click Add alt text and Save alt text. In the mobile app, tap the image, then Information, then Save.
Should the alt text be the same on every photo of a product?
Each photo shows something different, so each one gets its own description. The front, a detail and the product in use are three separate pictures. The same sentence copied onto every image tells a machine you have one photo many times.
Sources: Google Search Central, Image SEO best practices (updated March 2, 2026), on how Google reads images; Shopify Help Center, Adding alt text to product media, read November 9, 2026, for the admin steps and the 125 character guidance. The skincare store is an illustration, not a client.