🔍 Why Search Atlas Still Shows Old Image Data
When you replace images on your website — for example, swapping PNG files for JPEGs — Search Atlas may continue displaying the previous image attributes, including outdated alt text, file types, or URLs. This happens because Search Atlas stores a cached snapshot of your site from its last crawl. Clearing your CMS cache or CDN cache does not automatically trigger a new crawl inside Search Atlas. You need to manually instruct the platform to re-fetch and reprocess your images.
📋 What You Will Need
- Access to your Search Atlas account
- Your CMS and CDN caches already cleared before triggering a new crawl
- The target site added and verified inside Search Atlas
🚀 Step 1 — Trigger a Manual Recrawl
To force Search Atlas to pick up your updated images, you need to trigger a new crawl of your site from within the platform. Navigate to your site inside Search Atlas and look for the option to manually start or re-run a crawl. Initiate that crawl and allow it to complete before moving to the next step.
Depending on your site size, the recrawl can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. Wait until the crawl status shows as complete before reviewing your image data.
⚙️ Step 2 — Reprocess Image Data
After the recrawl completes, Search Atlas needs to reprocess the updated image data so that new alt texts, file types, and attributes are correctly reflected across all reports. Within your site's reporting area, look for an option to re-run or refresh the analysis. Trigger that reprocessing action and wait for it to finish before checking your results.
🧹 Step 3 — Confirm Your External Cache Is Cleared
Before verifying results inside Search Atlas, confirm that your external caches are genuinely cleared and serving the new image files. Stale responses from a CDN or browser cache can cause the Search Atlas crawler to re-fetch the old image even after a recrawl is triggered.
- CDN (e.g., Cloudflare): Use your CDN provider's cache purge feature to clear the affected image URLs or purge all cached assets.
- CMS (e.g., WordPress): Clear both your plugin-level cache and any server-side page cache.
- Browser: Open the image URL directly in an incognito window to verify the new file is being served before re-triggering the crawl.
📞 Still Seeing Stale Image Data?
If your images are still showing outdated attributes after completing the steps above, our support team can investigate further. When escalating, please have the following ready: your site's project name in Search Atlas, the specific image URLs affected, the approximate time you replaced the files, and confirmation that your external caches have been cleared.
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.