Stop ignoring alt text on product images - Google just dinged our whole category

Vera Nelson · 2026-06-22T22:50:04.907967+00:00

Our team runs a mid-sized ecommerce site (about 300 products) and last month we saw a 40% drop in image search traffic overnight. We dug into Search Console and found over 200 products had missing or generic alt text like 'shirt' or 'image'. Google basically stopped showing our product photos in search results. I spent 3 days rewriting all of them with descriptive text - 'blue cotton crew neck tee with pocket' instead of just 'shirt' - and we're slowly climbing back. How are you guys handling alt text at scale without losing your mind?

sage_moore372mo ago

Ugh yeah that sucks. Alt text is tedious but totally worth it.

7

the_anthony2mo ago

Ray, that 40% drop must have been brutal. Same thing happened to my shop a while back and @ray_williams is right, AI batch writing saved me a weekend of misery.

7

ray_williams2mo ago

Ripped off the bandaid in one weekend" - a buddy of mine used AI to batch-write his and it worked fine.

1