Why it matters
Google calls alt text the most important attribute for image metadata and uses it, with computer vision and the page content, to understand the image. Alt text should describe the image for someone who cannot see it, and the image can rank for what it describes.
How to meet it
Make alt text a required CMS field for content images, write specific descriptions rather than file names or keyword lists, and give decorative images an empty alt="". If alt text is generated with an LLM, as a community speaker showed through a crawler's custom JavaScript, first run it on a few chosen URLs and review the output, and give the model the page title as well as the image so the text carries the page's intent.
How to test it
A crawl finds no content image with a missing alt, an empty alt or an alt equal to the file name; the axe or Lighthouse image-alt check passes.
How Regensbot covers it
Decided from one URL.
An audit reads the response, the headers, the HTML, robots.txt, the sitemaps and the structured data, and the finding shows the evidence it saw.
Sources
Google documents01
Claims in the knowledge base05
- D2-C534SourceUsing images to your advantage and Engaging Search users with videosGoogle's documentation
- D2-C535ConfirmedUsing images to your advantage and Engaging Search users with videosSaid on stage
- D2-C536ConsistentUsing images to your advantage and Engaging Search users with videosSaid on stage
- D2-C949UndocumentedLightning session F: MediaSaid on stage
- D2-C950ConsistentLightning session F: MediaSaid on stage
Claim IDs refer to the Search Central Live 2026 knowledge base. The knowledge base (opens in a new tab)
- Confirmed
- Google's documentation states the same thing.
- Consistent
- Google's documentation supports it without stating it.
- Undocumented
- Said or shown at the event, not in the documentation.
- Source
- The claim is the cited document itself.