Vitals filled every image alt-text with the product title on Shopify — fix the duplicate alts
Vitals' Image Optimization tool can bulk-set alt-text, and the usual result is that every photo on a product gets the exact same alt — the product title — so an item with six images now has six identical alts, repeated across your whole catalog. Alt-text is meant to describe each specific image for image SEO and screen readers, not echo the title, so this both weakens image search and breaks accessibility. Shopify keeps no history of alt-text and most backups skip it entirely, so once Vitals overwrites your varied descriptions there's no native undo to bring them back.
Step by step
Turn off the Vitals alt-text rule first. In Vitals, open Image Optimization (the SEO / alt-text tool) and disable the automatic alt-text feature — otherwise it re-applies the product title on its next run and overwrites whatever you fix. While you're there, check whether it also touched collection images, not just products.
See how wide the damage is before you start editing. Spot-check a handful of products — each image's alt should be unique and descriptive — by opening a product page and viewing the image alt in the page source, or scanning the alt column in a fresh product export. This tells you which products are worst hit and worth fixing first.
Recover your real alts from any copy you still have: re-import the Image Alt Text column from a product CSV exported before Vitals ran (Shopify's export or Matrixify). If no export exists, the alts have to be rewritten by hand — describe what's actually in each shot (colour, angle, detail, who's wearing it) instead of repeating the title, and start with your top-traffic products.
Going forward, keep a daily snapshot of alt-text alongside your other SEO fields — most backups skip alt-text completely, which is why this was invisible until it hurt. Then the next time a bulk tool flattens every alt to the product title, you're alerted the day it happens with the likely app named, and yesterday's varied alt-text restores in one click instead of a manual rewrite.
Source: Google Search Central: image SEO best practices (use unique, descriptive alt text); Vitals Image Optimization / SEO alt-text feature
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.