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Visual Content Statistics (2026)

The Visual Hundred: six measures of how much of the web now runs on pictures and video, from page bytes and alt text to visual search and YouTube, each drawn as 100 cells.

Updated Nov 12, 20267 charts · 4 key stats17 primary sourcesEmbed & share ↓
Fig. 1

The Visual Hundred

Six visual content and video statistics, each drawn as 100 cells. Hover or tap a panel for its exact definition. Highlighted: mobile pages whose largest element (LCP) is an image, the measure that matters most for SEO.

Share RemainderEach panel = 100 cells
U.S. adults on YouTube84%Pages with image LCP76%Home pages missing alt53.1%Mobile data as video~50%Lens shopping searches20%U.S. TV time on YouTube15.8%

Each panel has its own base (adults, pages, bytes of traffic, searches, minutes), so the panels are not comparable with each other. The mobile traffic panel is an approximate figure from four European networks.

SourcesPew Research1; Web Almanac 2025 (Performance)2; WebAIM3; Ericsson Mobility Report4; Google Shopping (Oct 2024)5; Nielsen (Aug 2026 Gauge)6
YouTube Shorts views per day, Jan 2026
200B
Average daily views, per YouTube's CEO
SourceYouTube9
Images per top home page, Feb 2026
66.6
+13.6% in one year; 16.2% lack alt text
SourceWebAIM3
Median mobile home page weight, July 2025
2,559 KB
911 KB of it is images, the largest share
SourceWeb Almanac 2025 (Page Weight)10
Fig. 2

Images are the heaviest part of a typical web page

Page weight by content type: median mobile home page, kilobytes, July 2025

Images911 KBJavaScript632 KBFonts122 KBCSS77 KBHTML22 KB

Each bar is the median for that content type, so the bars do not add up to the median total page (2,559 KB). On desktop, images were 1,058 KB of a 2,862 KB median home page.

SourceWeb Almanac 2025 (Page Weight)10
Fig. 3

WebP and AVIF are just 13% of images on mobile pages

Image format share of all images requested by mobile pages, %, 2024 (image SEO and file formats)

32.4%28.4%16.8%13.0%
  • JPEG32.4%32.4%
  • PNG28.4%28.4%
  • GIF16.8%16.8%
  • WebP or AVIF13%13.0%
  • SVG6.4%6.4%
  • Other3%3.0%
  • All images100%100%

"WebP or AVIF" adds WebP (12%) and AVIF (1.0%). "Other" adds ICO (1.3%) and other or unknown formats (1.7%). JPEG fell from 40% of images in 2022. This is the 2024 Web Almanac; the 2025 edition has no media chapter.

SourceWeb Almanac 2024 (Media)11
Fig. 4

Half of top home pages still have images missing alt text

Share of the top 1,000,000 home pages with a missing alt text error, %, by year

020%40%60%80%201920212023202653.1%68%

WebAIM's automated WAVE scan of the top million home pages, run each February. Detecting a missing alt attribute is not the same as judging alt text quality: WebAIM found another 10.8% of images with alt text had questionable or repetitive text.

SourceWebAIM3
Fig. 6

YouTube's share of U.S. TV viewing keeps setting records

YouTube's share of total U.S. TV watch time, %, selected months (video consumption trends)

05%10%15%20%Apr 2024Apr 2025Aug 202615.8%9.6%

Apr 2024 (~9.6%) is derived from Nielsen's statement that YouTube was "up 2.8 points since April 2024" at 12.4% in April 2025. Lines join only the months shown; Nielsen publishes every month.

SourcesNielsen (Apr 2025 Gauge)15; Nielsen (Jul 2025 Gauge)16; Nielsen (Jul 2026 Gauge)17; Nielsen (Aug 2026 Gauge)6
Fig. 7

The most-used online platform in the U.S. is a video platform

Share of U.S. adults who say they ever use each platform, %, 2025 (social media visual content reach)

YouTube84%Facebook71%Instagram50%TikTok37%WhatsApp32%Reddit26%

Pew survey of 5,022 U.S. adults, Feb. 5 to June 18, 2025. Pew reports Instagram as "half of adults." TikTok use was 21% in 2021.

SourcePew Research1
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What are the key visual content statistics for 2026?

Images are the Largest Contentful Paint element on 76% of mobile pages, Google now handles over 50 billion visual searches a month, and 84% of U.S. adults use YouTube. The Visual Hundred in Figure 1 draws six measures like these as panels of 100 cells, so each share can be read at a glance. The panels have different bases (people, pages, network traffic, searches and viewing time), so read each one on its own rather than against its neighbors.

Many visual content statistics that circulate online, such as claims that visuals lift engagement by a fixed percentage, have no traceable source. This graphic uses only figures we could confirm with the organization that measured them: HTTP Archive, WebAIM, Google, Pew Research Center, Nielsen and Ericsson.

How much of a web page is images?

The median mobile home page carried 911 KB of images in July 2025, more than any other content type, according to HTTP Archive's Web Almanac. JavaScript came second at 632 KB, and the median mobile home page weighed 2,559 KB in total. On desktop, images reached 1,058 KB.

That weight matters for search because images are usually the element that Core Web Vitals measures. The LCP element was an image on 76% of mobile pages and 85.3% of desktop pages. Yet about 16% to 17% of pages lazy-load that LCP image, which delays it. Modern formats are still a minority: in the 2024 crawl, WebP (12%) and AVIF (1.0%) made up 13% of images on mobile pages, while JPEG and PNG were 60.8% between them.

What percentage of images are missing alt text?

16.2% of all images on the top one million home pages had no alt text in February 2026, down from 18.5% in 2025, according to WebAIM. By page, 53.1% of those home pages had at least one missing-alt-text error, down from 68% in 2019. The number of images keeps rising, to an average of 66.6 per home page, up 13.6% in a year. WebAIM also found that 45% of images missing alt text were links, which leaves those links without a description for screen readers and search engines.

How many visual searches does Google handle a month?

Google said in October 2026 that it had crossed over 50 billion visual searches per month. That is up from more than 8 billion Lens searches a month in May 2022, over 12 billion in May 2023 and nearly 20 billion in October 2024. Google also said in 2024 that 20% of Lens searches are shopping-related, which makes image SEO a product discovery channel, not only an accessibility task. The 2026 figure does not name Lens, so it may include other visual search tools.

How much video do people watch?

YouTube took a record 15.8% of all U.S. TV watch time in August 2026, according to Nielsen, up from 12.4% in April 2025. YouTube is also the most-used online platform among U.S. adults, at 84% in Pew's 2025 survey, and its Shorts feed averages 200 billion views a day. On mobile networks, Ericsson measured video at around 50% of traffic across four European networks, with social media video making up 70% to 80% of the video watched on smartphones.

Methodology & caveats

The lead article for this graphic (Zebracat's visual content statistics roundup) attributes its figures only to itself, so none of its numbers are used. Each figure here comes from the primary publisher and is shown as published, without rounding. Periods differ by card: Web Almanac page weight and LCP data are from the July 2025 crawl, image formats from the 2024 Media chapter (the 2025 edition has no media chapter), WebAIM from February 2026, Pew from February to June 2025, and Nielsen from April 2024 to August 2026. Three values are derived and marked in their card notes: Nielsen's April 2024 YouTube share (12.4% less the stated 2.8 points), Google's April 2025 visual search count (nearly 20 billion plus the stated 5 billion), and the combined WebP and AVIF share. Google's counts use qualifiers ("more than", "nearly", "over"), and its October 2026 figure covers visual searches in general. Ericsson's video share is approximate and comes from four European networks, not the world. Web Almanac content-type figures are medians and do not add up to the median page total.

Sources

  1. [1]
    Pew Research Center. Americans' Social Media Use 2025 (Nov 20, 2025)https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/11/20/americans-social-media-use-2025/
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    HTTP Archive. Web Almanac 2025, Chapter 7: Performance (July 2025 dataset)https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2025/performance
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    WebAIM. The WebAIM Million: The 2026 report on the accessibility of the top 1,000,000 home pageshttps://webaim.org/projects/million/
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    Ericsson. Short-form dominates video traffic (Ericsson Mobility Report, Nov 2025)https://www.ericsson.com/en/reports-and-papers/mobility-report/articles/short-form-dominates-video-traffic
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    Google. New ways to shop what you see with Google Lens (Oct 3, 2024)https://blog.google/products/shopping/visual-search-lens-shopping/
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    Nielsen. TV Viewing Cools Off in Nielsen's August Gauge Reports (Oct 2026)https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2026/tv-viewing-cools-off-in-nielsens-august-gauge-reports-as-sports-take-a-breather-and-school-resumes/
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    Alphabet. Q3 2026 earnings call: CEO remarks (Oct 28, 2026)https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q3-2026/
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    Google. Search your world, any way and anywhere (May 11, 2022)https://blog.google/products/search/search-io22/
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    YouTube. The future of YouTube: 2026 letter from CEO Neal Mohan (Jan 21, 2026)https://blog.youtube/inside-youtube/the-future-of-youtube-2026/
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    HTTP Archive. Web Almanac 2025, Chapter 14: Page Weight (July 2025 dataset)https://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2025/page-weight
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    HTTP Archive. Web Almanac 2024, Chapter 5: Mediahttps://almanac.httparchive.org/en/2024/media
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    Google. Google I/O 2023: Making AI more helpful for everyone (May 10, 2023)https://blog.google/technology/ai/google-io-2023-keynote-sundar-pichai/
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    Google. Ask questions in new ways with AI in Search (Oct 3, 2024)https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-lens-october-2024-updates/
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    Alphabet. Q1 2025 earnings call: CEO remarks (Apr 24, 2025)https://blog.google/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q1-2025/
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    Nielsen. The Gauge: Streaming Peaks Again, Drawing From Successful Multiplatform Strategies (May 2025)https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2025/the-gauge-streaming-peaks-again-drawing-from-successful-multiplatform-strategies/
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    Nielsen. Streaming Cranks Up the Heat in July, Accounts for Nearly Half of All TV Viewing (Aug 2025)https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2025/streaming-cranks-up-the-heat-in-july-accounts-for-nearly-half-of-all-tv-viewing-in-nielsens-the-gauge/
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    Nielsen. TV Usage Kicks Usual Summer Slowdown in Nielsen's July Gauge Reports (Sep 10, 2026)https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2026/tv-usage-kicks-usual-summer-slowdown-fueled-by-world-cup-and-streaming-in-nielsens-july-gauge-reports/
Cite this graphicSEO.co. “Visual Content Statistics (2026).” SEO.co Graphics, updated 2026-11-12. https://seo.co/graphics/visual-content-statistics