Your success rate is the most tightly regulated claim your fertility clinic makes. Yet on some of the biggest clinic websites, that claim is not written as text at all. It is a picture. On 8 September 2026, we tried to fetch 8 Australian IVF success rate pages. Five of them loaded. On two of those five, no success percentage appears anywhere in the text you can read. The numbers sit inside chart images. That means a screen reader cannot read them, Google cannot index them and AI answer tools cannot quote them.
What did we actually check?
We searched the way your patients search. We typed questions about IVF success rates in Australia, clinic success rates and live birth rates per cycle. Then we took the pages those searches returned.
That gave us 8 pages. Six belong to fertility providers or fertility doctors. One is a comparison site, and one is a consumer group.
We fetched all 8 on 8 September 2026. We used an ordinary browser setting with JavaScript turned off. That is roughly how a search engine and most AI tools see your page.
For each page, we asked 4 questions. Does a success percentage appear in the text you can read? Is there a data table? Do the chart images carry the numbers in their alt text, the hidden description behind each image? And does the page point you to the national dataset?
We found a bug in our own method, and we are sharing it. Our first counting pass used a search pattern that needed a letter or number straight after the percent sign. A percent sign is neither, so the pattern matched almost nothing. As a result, 2 pages that state their numbers clearly were scored as stating none. We caught it because a result changed between 2 runs. Every figure on this page comes from the corrected pass. If a measurement changes when you look at it twice, it is not finished.
What did the eight pages actually show?
Three of the 8 pages refused our request outright and returned an error called a 403. That is a finding in its own right, and we come back to it below.
| What we measured | Result |
|---|---|
| Pages we tried to fetch. | 8 |
| Pages that loaded for a plain request. | 5 |
| Pages that blocked the request with a 403. | 3 |
| Of the 5 that loaded, pages with no success percentage anywhere in the readable text. | 2 |
| Pages with a data table of results. | 1 |
| Chart images across the whole set. | 13 |
| Of those 13, chart images whose alt text contains a number. | 4, and all 4 belong to one clinic. |
| Pages that link to the national dataset. | 2 |
Put the 2 halves together. Of the 8 pages a patient can find, only 3 show a success rate as text a machine can read without running JavaScript.
The 2 picture-only pages belong to large, well known providers. Neither is a small clinic with a hobby website. On one of them, the whole success rate section is a single JPG image. Its alt text is the clinic's name followed by the words success rates, with no number.
The other page is even more striking. It carries 8 chart images. Five of them have the alt text Measure01, Measure02, Measure03, Measure04 and Measure05. Those are placeholder labels from a design file. They sit on the images that carry the clinic's main claim.
We tested the obvious objection before we wrote any of this. You might think the numbers are in the alt text, so the pages are fine. They are not. The 2 picture-only pages hold 9 chart images, and zero of them carry a percentage in alt text. Neither page has a single HTML table. There is no text version of the number anywhere on either page.
One more detail is worth keeping. On one of the 2 pages, 692 percent signs do appear in the page code. Every one of them is a design setting, such as a width, a height or a level of see-through. Say you counted percent signs in the code and called that a data check. That page would look like the most data-rich page in the set. In fact, it has no data on it at all.
Why does a picture of a number fail?
It fails 3 different audiences at once, and each failure has its own cause.
| Who cannot read it | What happens |
|---|---|
| A patient using a screen reader. | They hear the alt text. On the pages we checked, that is a file name, a clinic name or the word Measure and a number. They never learn the success rate. |
| Google. | Google cannot index text inside an image. Your page can rank for the phrase success rates while showing no success rate. |
| ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews. | An answer tool quotes text it has fetched, and it cannot quote a chart. Ask it which Australian clinic has what success rate. It will go to whichever page states a number in words. |
That last row is the one that costs you patients. Your clinic spent real money producing that data and designing that chart. Then it published it in the one format that makes sure nothing will ever quote it.
The 403 pages have the same problem from the other end. A page that refuses a plain request has decided that automated readers do not get in. Usually this happens by accident, through a firewall rule. Some AI crawlers name themselves, so you can choose to let them in. We wrote about which ones and how in how to rank in AI search.
Is an unreadable claim still a regulated claim?
Yes, it is. Making a claim hard to read will not protect you, and it does not count as following the rules.
A success rate is a claim about the results of a health service. Section 133 of the National Law sets the health ad rules. If you break them, the maximum is $60,000 per offence for a person and $120,000 for a company. Putting the claim in a JPG does not move it outside the rule. It only makes it harder for you to prove what you said and when.
There is also a second regulator here, and it has already looked at this issue.
On 14 November 2016, the ACCC published findings after it reviewed the websites of Australia's major IVF clinics. Commissioner Sarah Court said some clinics used clinical pregnancy rate data to compare their success rates. That data showed how well the clinic created an embryo, rather than live birth rates. The ACCC also noted that clinics showed that data next to photos of newborn babies.
This difference matters more than anything else in your field. A clinical pregnancy is not a baby. A rate per embryo transfer is not a rate per cycle started. If you change what you divide by, the same clinic's number can move a long way.
The awkward part. Both terms are still in use on the pages we checked. Three of the 5 readable pages use the phrase clinical pregnancy. A regulator said the wording confuses people 10 years ago, and the wording is still there. When the number is also a picture, your patient has no real way to tell which measure they are looking at.
Can a patient check an Australian clinic independently?
Yes, they can, and that makes fertility different from every other clinical field we write about.
UNSW Sydney's National Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistics Unit runs YourIVFSuccess. It is an independent, government funded website that publishes success rates for each clinic. UNSW says it lets patients search all 90 accredited IVF clinics in Australia. It also says more than 90,000 people had used it since it launched in 2021.
We pulled its sitemap on 8 September 2026. It lists 97 individual clinic pages. The exact count of accredited clinics may change from day to day, but the main point holds. There is a public page for almost every clinic in the country, and the clinic did not write it.
So a patient reading a chart on your website can open a second tab. There, they can read an independent figure for your clinic. No other Australian healthcare field has that. Dentistry does not, physiotherapy does not and cosmetic medicine does not.
Of the 5 readable pages we checked, 2 link to it and 3 do not.
Linking to the independent dataset is the strongest trust move you can make on a fertility website, and it is free. It tells patients your number stands up to checking. If you refuse to link to it, that says nothing good, and your patient can find it in one search anyway.
What does the one clinic doing it properly do?
One page in the set gets it right, and you can copy it exactly.
- Twelve different percentages appear in the readable text of the page, and not only in the charts.
- It has 4 chart images, and all four carry a percentage in their alt text. It is the only page in the set that does this.
- It names the age bands the figures apply to.
- It uses the phrase live birth as well as clinical pregnancy, so the measure is clear.
- It links to the national dataset.
That page does nothing clever. It does the ordinary thing, which is writing the number down. It costs nothing and takes an afternoon. And it is the version that a screen reader, Google and ChatGPT can all use.
How do you fix a success rate page in an afternoon?
Keep your charts, because charts are good. Just stop making them the only copy of your data.
| Do this | Why |
|---|---|
| Put every number in an HTML table under the chart. | Google can index it, AI tools can quote it and screen readers can read it aloud. It also still works if the image fails to load. |
| Write real alt text on every chart. | Describe what the chart shows and include the main figure. Never leave a design file label like Measure01 on your live site. |
| Name the measure in the same sentence as the number. | Say live birth or clinical pregnancy, and per cycle started or per embryo transfer. This is the exact confusion the ACCC named in 2016. |
| Name the age band and the time period. | A rate with no age band and no date cannot be compared to anything. |
| Link to the national dataset. | Your patient will check anyway. Being the one who sent them there is worth more than being the one who did not. |
| Check the page loads for a plain request, with a 200 code. | Three of the 8 pages we tried returned a 403. If an answer tool cannot fetch your page, it cannot quote it. |
For the general version of this for any clinic page, see schema markup for healthcare websites and the 30 minute healthcare website audit.
What this check does not show
Eight pages is a small sample, and we would rather say so than dress it up.
- It is not a survey of Australian fertility clinics. It is the set of pages that came back from patient style searches on one day. A different day would return a slightly different set.
- We have not named any clinic. We are pointing to a pattern in how the field publishes data. We are not judging any provider's care or results. Every page we checked is public, and anyone can repeat the test.
- We did not run JavaScript. Some numbers may appear for a person in a browser. That is exactly the gap. What a person sees and what a crawler fetches can differ, and AI tools quote what the crawler fetches.
- We are not saying any of these pages breaks a rule. We did not check whether any clinic's figures are accurate. We only checked whether a machine can read them. Those are different questions.
- A 403 is usually not on purpose. It is normally a security tool doing its job a little too well. You still need to know about it.
The finding that survives all of that is narrow and solid. On 2 of 5 readable pages, one of the most important numbers in Australian healthcare is in a format no machine and no screen reader can read. If your success rate page looks like that, you can fix it in an afternoon.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Google read a success rate that is inside an image?
No. Text inside an image is not indexable page content. The page can rank for the phrase success rates while containing no success rate a crawler can read. The fix is to repeat every figure in an HTML table under the chart, and to write real alt text on the image.
Why can ChatGPT not quote my clinic's success rate?
An answer engine quotes text it retrieved. If your number only exists inside a chart image, there is nothing for it to quote, so it uses a competitor page that states a number in words. Two of the five Australian IVF pages we could fetch on 8 September 2026 had no success percentage in their readable text at all.
What is the difference between a clinical pregnancy rate and a live birth rate?
A clinical pregnancy rate measures pregnancies confirmed, not babies born. A live birth rate measures births. In November 2016 the ACCC found some Australian IVF clinics used clinical pregnancy data to compare success rates where that data reflected success in creating an embryo rather than live birth rates. The denominator matters just as much: per embryo transfer is not the same as per cycle started.
Where can Australian patients check a clinic's IVF success rate independently?
On YourIVFSuccess, an independent government funded website run by UNSW Sydney's National Perinatal Epidemiology and Statistics Unit. UNSW states it covers all 90 accredited IVF clinics in Australia and that more than 90,000 people had used it since its 2021 launch. Its sitemap listed 97 individual clinic pages when we checked on 8 September 2026.
Does AHPRA regulate IVF success rate claims?
A success rate is a claim about the outcome of a regulated health service, so the advertising rules in the National Law apply. Section 133 carries a maximum of $60,000 per offence for an individual and $120,000 for a body corporate. Australian Consumer Law applies as well, which is why the ACCC reviewed the sector in 2016.
What should alt text on a success rate chart say?
Describe what the chart shows and include the headline figure, the measure and the age band. One page in our set does this on all four of its charts, and it is the only one that does. Never ship a design file label. We found live charts with the alt text Measure01 through Measure05 on a major provider's page.
