Definitions
- Eligible site
- A distinct public domain with a completed audit, at least one image scanned, and a successful crawl status.
- Sample unit
- Distinct domains, not audit runs. Repeating an audit on one domain does not increase the sample size.
- Missing alt text
- An in-scope image whose rendered alt attribute is absent or empty when the image is not identified as decorative.
- Weak alt text
- An in-scope image whose current text falls below the audit’s documented quality threshold. This is a prioritisation signal, not a WCAG conformance verdict.
- Coverage
- The share of in-scope crawled images that have useful alt text under the audit heuristic.
- Publication threshold
- Aggregate percentages remain hidden until at least 25 eligible distinct domains are available.
Privacy
Public aggregates never expose email addresses, submitted site URLs, normalised domains, priority-page lists, or sample image URLs. The public snapshot contains only sample size, aggregate measures, issue labels, threshold status, and timestamps.
Limitations
Sites are self-selected users of a free public audit, not a random sample of all WordPress sites. Crawlability, lazy loading, blocked assets, and page selection can affect what is observed. Scores are heuristic prioritisation aids, not legal accessibility certification or guaranteed ranking predictions.
Reproduce the public status
The current anonymised snapshot is available at /api/image-seo-stats. Read the State of WordPress Image SEO 2026 for the public report, or run the audit on your own site.