Why It Matters

Google reads your images. Most websites make it very hard for Google to do that.

Search engines cannot see a photograph the way a person can. They rely on signals around it: the filename, the alt text, the caption. That is what tells Google what the image is and whether it is relevant. When those signals are missing or vague, the image does nothing for your search visibility. A website with twenty pages and five images per page has a hundred opportunities to signal relevance to Google, or a hundred missed ones. Over time, across every page of your site, that adds up in ways most businesses never see.

And it is not only Google. AI-powered search tools work from exactly the same signals. If your images are not structured correctly, they are invisible to the next generation of search as well.

What The Visual Image Checker™ Scans

Three things that most website owners have never looked at.

Here is what the difference looks like in practice. A file named IMG_4729.jpg tells Google nothing about what it shows. A file named reinforced-concrete-bridge-inspection-wickford-essex.jpg tells it exactly what the image is, where it was taken, and what kind of work your company does. That gap, multiplied across every image on your site, is the difference between a website that works for your business and one that simply looks the part.

A Note on Compliance

Alt text is not only an SEO signal. It is also a legal requirement.

The European Accessibility Act and WCAG 2.2 require websites to provide meaningful text alternatives for every image. For businesses in engineering, infrastructure, and professional services, where government contracts, procurement processes, and public-facing accountability are part of everyday life, this is a compliance matter as much as a ranking one. The checker shows you exactly where your alt text is missing or empty, so you can see where your site falls short.

What You Will See

A results page you can act on straight away, or take directly to your web team.

You get a summary showing how many images were found, how many descriptive filenames, how many have no caption. Below that, a row-by-row breakdown of every image on the page with a traffic light rating for each one. You can download the full Visual Image Checker™ report and hand it to whoever manages your website.

Where to Start With Your Results

A page full of red ratings can feel overwhelming. It is not. There is a logical order.

You get a clear summary showing how many images were found, how many have descriptive filenames, how many are missing alt text, and how many have no caption. Below that, you receive a row-by-row breakdown of every image on the page, with a traffic light rating for each one. You can download the full Visual Image Checker™ report and hand it directly to whoever manages your website.

Run The Visual Image Checker™ On More That Your Homepage

Most people run the Visual Image Checker™ on their homepage first. That is a reasonable starting point, but it is rarely where the biggest opportunities are.

Project pages, case study pages, service pages, and blog posts are the pages that rank for specific searches. They are also the pages where images are most often uploaded quickly, without the signals being considered. Run the checker across those pages too. That is where the real picture of your site’s image health will emerge.

Why The Visual Image Checker™ Might Not Find Your Images

Some websites are built in a way that hides their images from search engines.

Some websites are built in a way that hides their images from search engines, even though the images look perfectly normal when you view the page in your browser. Google has exactly the same problem reading them. If the checker returns no results for your page, this is most likely the reason, and it is worth knowing about.

Get in touch and we can look at your site together.