The Words Behind Your Pictures: Alt Text, Visual Search and Being Found by Machines

31 March 2026

Your images are being read — by screen readers, by Google, and now by AI systems describing your business to potential customers. Whether they say anything useful is up to you.

Why image words suddenly matter more

• Visual search is mainstream: Google Lens alone handles billions of searches monthly — people photographing a chair, a plant, a haircut and asking "where do I get this?" Well-described images are how you appear in those answers.
• Google Images remains a huge discovery channel, especially for products, food, interiors and anything chosen by eye.
• AI answer engines "see" through text: your alt text and captions are part of how they understand — and describe — what you offer.
• Accessibility is the law and the point: alt text exists so blind and partially sighted visitors get the information too. Doing right and ranking well are, for once, the same task.

The five-minute habit

For every image you upload: a filename that says what it is (oak-kitchen-aylesbury.jpg, not IMG_4471.jpg) and one honest descriptive sentence in the alt field — what's actually in the picture, place included where natural. No keyword-stuffing; describe it as you would to someone on the phone. Machines and humans now want the same thing: the truth, plainly written.