The problem
A search engine cannot see a photograph. It sees a file. The only way it learns that an image shows a west-facing deck with a lake view is if that was written down somewhere it can read — and on a property website, that means the image’s alt text.
Most property websites give every photo on a listing the same alt text, usually the address. A fifty-photo gallery becomes fifty identical strings. To an image search engine that reads as boilerplate and is discounted. To a visitor using a screen reader it is fifty announcements of an address they already know. Many IDX plugins write no alt text at all, which is worse.
The details that actually sell a property — the deck, the workshop, the view, the remodelled kitchen — usually exist only in the photographs. If nothing describes them, nothing can find them.
What MLS Genie does
Each photo is described on its own. That description becomes the image’s alt text, its caption, the text shown when the photo is opened, and part of the structured data search engines read.
Descriptions come from the best source available for each individual photo, in this order:
- Wording typed by hand. Alt text edited in WordPress is treated as final and is never overwritten — not by a listing refresh, not by a re-import, not by any automatic process.
- The caption from the MLS. Where the listing agent wrote a caption against a photo when they uploaded it, that wording is used exactly as written.
- A description of the image itself. Where the MLS carries no caption, MLS Genie examines the photograph and describes what is in it — the room or area, and one or two concrete details such as finishes, fixtures, layout or outlook.
- The listing record. A plain, accurate line drawn from the property data, so no image is ever left with nothing.
A better source is never replaced by a weaker one. This is the part that matters in practice: listings refresh constantly, and without it every refresh would quietly discard the wording an agent had taken the trouble to write.
Fair Housing screening
Every description MLS Genie generates is checked against Fair Housing rules before it is stored, and discarded rather than published if it does not pass.
This is not a formality. Photo descriptions are advertising copy published under the listing agent’s licence, and automatic description of a home reliably produces phrasing about families, neighbourhoods, safety and who a property would suit — exactly the phrasing that creates exposure. It is prevented at the point of writing and checked again before anything is saved.
Wording a human wrote is flagged for review rather than silently altered. The product does not rewrite an agent’s words on their behalf.
No two photos say the same thing
Descriptions are made unique across a listing before they are saved. Duplicate alt text across a gallery is worth less than a plainer description that is distinct, so where two photos would otherwise read identically they are separated.
What it costs
Nothing extra, on any plan, and there is nothing to switch on. Descriptions are produced quietly in the background after a listing imports, so importing is never delayed. A newly imported listing works immediately and its descriptions fill in shortly afterwards.
Writing your own
If you caption photos in the MLS when you list a property, those captions are used. Twenty seconds per listing puts your own words on your own photographs, and they carry through to your website automatically — and to the portals you syndicate to, which MLS Genie does not control but which benefit anyway.
You know which window faces the lake. Software is a good floor, not a better answer.
