Alt Tag (2024)

FAQs

What is the limit of Alt tag? ›

Tip: Some people recommend sticking to a maximum of 125 characters when writing alt text for images. That's because many assistive technologies stop reading alt text at 125 characters. But it's not a strict limit. If you need to write much more, see the WAI's advice on complex images.

The alt text shouldn't be longer than a sentence or two—most of the time a few thoughtfully selected words will do. Consider what is important about an image. For example, important context might be the setting, the emotions on people's faces, the colors, or the relative sizes.

The alt attribute is used to assign a text alternative to an img . The alternative text is used anytime the image is not rendered and by assistive technologies such as screen readers.

Alt text provides better image context/descriptions to search engine crawlers, helping them to index and rank an image properly in image search. It also provides search engines with contextual information about the content on the page.

Why is image alt text important? Image alt text is important for three reasons: accessibility, user experience, and image traffic. Understanding these reasons will help you write effective alt text for all of your images.

Alt tags provide context to what an image is displaying, informing search engine crawlers and allowing them to index an image correctly. However, not only do alt tags help search engine crawlers, not setting alt tags for your images can have a detrimental effect on the ranking of your web pages.

Adding unnecessary alt text can make user experiences worse

Screen readers treat alt text as important content, and they'll generally announce the description to the user. If you add alt text to an image that doesn't need it, you might force people to spend time listening to irrelevant content.

An alt tag is an HTML attribute applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for the image. They are useful for visitors who cannot see the image, such as people with visual impairments. Alt tags are different from alt text, which is the text that appears when you hover over an image.

Alt text (alternative text) is an invisible description that can be read aloud through a screen reader device. This lets users understand what's happening in your content — without being able to see it.

Why should alt text be short? ›

First, if alt text is too lengthy, it can unnecessarily interrupt the content reading flow for screen reader users. Alternate text should provide equivalent access to the content of an image, but must do so efficiently in order to avoid burdening users with extraneous information.

Google uses alt text along with computer vision algorithms and the contents of the page to understand the subject matter of the image.

Try to make it less than 80 characters.

Avoid keyword stuffing for search engines. Accessibility practitioners recommend a maximum of 80 characters, so use common sense and be succinct with ALT text. JAWS, a popular screen reader, breaks ALT text into 125 character “chunks” for visually impaired users.

Expect Google to count a maximum of about 16 words (approximately 125 characters) as part of your ALT text that will be a signal used to rank a URL for relevant queries in regular Search (and 50 words in Image Search).

When adding an Alt Text it's important to keep it concise (around of 140 characters) yet descriptive. With a 140 character limit, it is unnecessary to start the Alt Text with "image of", "graph of", "photo of", etc.

The alt text shouldn't be longer than a sentence or two—most of the time a few thoughtfully selected words will do. Consider what is important about an image. For example, important context might be the setting, the emotions on people's faces, the colors, or the relative sizes.

Alt text should be 125-150 characters (think the length of a Tweet). Do not be redundant with alt text. For example, if you are explaining the image in the paragraph directly next to it, the alt text should not read the same. In some cases, the image may then be considered decorative.