diff --git a/crawl4ai/utils.py b/crawl4ai/utils.py
index 64ce9f57..2ea6fec7 100644
--- a/crawl4ai/utils.py
+++ b/crawl4ai/utils.py
@@ -634,7 +634,12 @@ def get_content_of_website_optimized(url: str, html: str, word_count_threshold:
         return node
 
     body = flatten_nested_elements(body)
-
+    base64_pattern = re.compile(r'data:image/[^;]+;base64,([^"]+)')
+    for img in imgs:
+        src = img.get('src', '')
+        if base64_pattern.match(src):
+            # Replace base64 data with empty string
+            img['src'] = base64_pattern.sub('', src)
     cleaned_html = str(body).replace('\n\n', '\n').replace('  ', ' ')
     cleaned_html = sanitize_html(cleaned_html)