Stock Photography Indicators and Generic Alt Text on UK SME Websites: What This Means for AI Signals

Last updated: March 2026
Source: Rank4AI observational research — rank4ai.co.uk

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TL;DR

An observational review of hundreds of UK SME websites found that around one in five had stock photography indicators visible in their HTML source. The larger issue is not that businesses use stock photos — that is a perfectly normal, practical choice — but that stock images frequently carry generic alt text copied directly from the stock library. For AI systems that process image alt text as part of entity understanding, this creates what we call a "double noise" problem: a generic image paired with a generic description produces no useful entity signal at all. The fix is straightforward and takes a few minutes per image.

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What We Found

Reviewing hundreds of UK SME websites in March 2026, we looked for stock photography indicators in HTML source code. Stock photo indicators were defined as references to Shutterstock, iStock, Getty Images, Unsplash or Pexels appearing in image URLs, alt text attributes, or filenames.

Key findings:

• Approximately 20% of sites had at least one stock photo indicator present in the HTML source
• Overall, only 61% of images across all reviewed sites had any alt text at all
• Alt text coverage varied considerably by industry, ranging from around 23% to 77%
• The combination of stock photography and generic alt text was the most common pattern — and the one most likely to create noise for AI entity signals

None of these findings should be read as establishing cause and effect. They are observational patterns from a sample of UK SME sites, intended to highlight a practical issue that is worth addressing.

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The Double Noise Problem

Stock photography is everywhere on the web, and for good reason. A small business that does not have p