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How to recover image alt-text after an app overwrote it on Shopify

Many SEO and image-optimizer apps bulk-rewrite your image alt-text. Shopify keeps no history for alt-text, and most full-store backups skip it entirely — so once it's gone, it's gone.

Step by step

  1. Pause the image/SEO app that ran the bulk change before it overwrites your fixes again.
  2. If you exported product data (with the Image Alt Text column) before the change, re-import only that column.
  3. If you have no export, the alt-text has to be rewritten by hand — there is no native undo.
  4. Going forward, snapshot alt-text daily alongside your other SEO fields so a bad bulk run is a one-click restore, not a manual rebuild.

Source: Shopify Community: image SEO / alt-text threads

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