Booster SEO Set All Your Image Alt Text to the Product Title? How to Fix Duplicate Alt Text on Shopify
You ran Booster SEO's bulk alt-text optimizer and now every image on a product carries the exact same alt text — your product or page title — repeated across all images. Identical alt text gives Google nothing unique to read for each image, which weakens image SEO, and it makes the page worse for shoppers using screen readers. The fix is to stop the rule from re-applying, then put back short, unique descriptions for each image.
If you didn't already have a backup, those old values are gone — Shopify keeps no history.
The steps below recover what you can. To make the next time a 1-click undo instead of hours of CSV work: a daily snapshot of every SEO field. Free to monitor, no card — and SEO Vault only reads your store unless you click restore.
Confirm how widespread it is. In Shopify admin, open a product with several images (Products > pick one > click each image > Edit alt text), or open the live product page and view source to scan the alt="" attributes. If every image shows the same text — your product or page title — Booster's bulk alt-text rule is the cause. Spot-check 5-10 products across different collections so you know whether it hit the whole catalog or just one batch.
Turn off the rule before you fix anything. In Booster SEO, open the Image Optimization / Alt Text section and disable the auto or bulk alt-text setting (or change the template away from 'Product title'). Bulk and autopilot features apply one template to every image and don't keep a per-image undo, so if you rewrite alt text while the rule is still on, the next run can simply overwrite your work again.
Write unique, descriptive alt text per image. Describe what's actually in the shot — e.g. 'navy linen shirt, front view' then 'navy linen shirt, cuff detail' — keep each under about 125 characters and skip keyword stuffing. For a handful of products, edit images directly in Shopify admin. For the whole catalog, export your products to CSV (the export includes an Image Alt Text column), edit there, and re-import — far faster than clicking through every image.
Decide if you can recover what you had before. Shopify keeps no history of alt text, so if Booster overwrote good descriptions and you have no backup, you're rewriting from scratch. This is exactly what SEO Vault handles: it snapshots your product and collection SEO fields (including image alt text) every day, alerts you when a mass change hits and flags the app that most likely caused it, and lets you restore the previous unique alt text in one click instead of redoing hundreds of images by hand.
Source: Shopify Help Center — guidance on adding and editing alt text for product images and media (help.shopify.com), which recommends short, descriptive, unique alt text per image.
SEO Vault keeps a daily snapshot of every SEO field on your store — meta titles, descriptions, alt-text, tags, handles (products AND collections) — and emails you the moment something changes in bulk, with the likely app responsible. One click restores yesterday's state, just the SEO fields. Free to monitor and get alerted; $14/mo for 1-click restore.