Alt text too long: fix keyword-stuffed alt attributes
Alt text over ~100 characters reads as keyword stuffing to Google and gets cut off by screen readers. Find images with over-long alt text free and rewrite them as concise descriptions.
What it means
One or more images on this page carry alt text longer than about 100 characters — the point at which most screen readers begin cutting off the text and Google's quality systems start treating it as padding rather than a description. Over-long alt text is usually the result of CMS automation or keyword insertion, not genuine accessibility intent.
Why it matters
Google's image-SEO guidance says alt attributes should describe the image concisely and accurately, and its spam policies specifically call out keyword stuffing in alt text as manipulative. When alt text reads as a keyword list — "red leather sofa living room furniture buy cheap discount sofa online UK" — Google scores it as a negative signal, not a positive one. The accessibility threshold is practical too: JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver all begin compressing or truncating alt text around this length, so longer text does not help screen-reader users.
How to fix it
- Rewrite flagged alt attributes to describe what the image shows in a single phrase — e.g.
alt="Red leather three-seat sofa in a modern living room". - Describe the image content, not the page topic, and don't begin with "Image of" or "Photo of".
- Use an empty
alt=""for purely decorative images so screen readers skip them. - For complex images — infographics, charts — put the extended description in a
<figcaption>oraria-describedby, keeping the alt itself short.
When it's not a problem
A chart or infographic that encodes data unavailable elsewhere may warrant a longer description — though the better solution is a short alt paired with a linked long description. Pages specifically about alt text, accessibility or typography may contain long alt examples as instructional content.
How common is it?
10 audited sites in our corpus currently show this issue. The breakdowns below show which platforms, gatekeepers, verticals and countries are most exposed.
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