SEO Issues From Image Hotlinking?

[GeorgiaSEOServices]

I have a client who is hotlinking their images from one of their domains. I'm assuming the images were originally stored on the first domain (let's call it SiteA.com) and when they were putting together SiteB.com, they decided to just link to the images directly on SiteA.com instead of moving the images to Site B. Essentially hotlinking.

Site A is not using the images in any way and in essence is just a gateway for their other sites and in this case a storage for their images.  It doesn't use those images at all, so it really doesn't get any benefits of the images being referenced since I read that Google sometimes counts that hotlinking as a "vote" for the original image. But again, since ite A doesn't use the images that are being hotlinked at all, there's no benefit for Site A.

My concern is that it's affecting their SEO for Site B because it makes it look like Site B is simply scraping data by hotlinking those images from Site A.

Their programmer suggested creating a virtual directory so that it "looked" like it was coming from Site B. My guess is that Google can see this, so then not only will it look like Site B is scaping/hotlinking images, but also trying to hide it which may send up red flags to Google.

My suggesstion to them was to just upload the images correctly into their own images directory on Site B. They own the images, so there's not any copyright issue, but that if they want proper SEO credit for that content, it all needs to be housed on the correct server and not hotlinked.

Am I correct in this or will the virtual directory serve just as well?

[EGOL]

thanks for this report

[MarieHaynes]

I was going to guess that there is a small benefit.  But really it's a guess. I would think it would count as a link.

[GeorgiaSEOServices]

Actually, that IS the one answer I do know and that it DOES have a benefit to you if your image is being hotlinked to because Google sees it as a "vote" or the equivalent of an inbound link. I saw that on the Google Webmaster Forums.

I'm just at a quandary about the linker.

[EGOL]

How about other people hotlinking images from your domain.  Do you think that google sees them pulling content from you via the image link and gives you a small credit for that?

I don't know the answer.  I assume that the value is low to nothing.  Do you have any ideas on this?

[MarieHaynes]

Interesting question.  My gut instinct is that there is no SEO drawback to what is happening here.  There is nothing in the quality guidelines that I'm aware of that says you can't hotlink images from another site.  Now, if the content was duplicated then that's another issue.

[EGOL]

It loos like nothing bad will happen, but that you lose a lot of SEO benefits from having images stored locally and getting the proper attribution.

I agree.  I don't know how much SEO benefits come from hot-linked images.  But, in case there is any benefit we have all of our images on our own domain and that requires terrabytes of BW per month.

[GeorgiaSEOServices]

I think you and I are on the same page and the same school of thought. I was just curious if there was any documented issues with being a "hotlinker" from an SEO perspective.

It loos like nothing bad will happen, but that you lose a lot of SEO benefits from having images stored locally and getting the proper attribution.

My other concern was making sure that it didn't look like their site was scraping from the other since they have thousands of products and ALL of those product images are being pulled from the other domain.

[EGOL]

Right.   That's why I have all of my images on the same server as the domain.

[GeorgiaSEOServices]

I can see your view, but the attribution is pretty important in their industry which is retail. I'm just concerned that to give image attribution over to another domain may be viewed as image hotlinking or scraping and that, as you said, they also won't get the benefit of a hotlink is someone else chooses to do the same.

[EGOL]

hmmm....  To me, this sounds like moving your whole office because your trash can is full.

[GeorgiaSEOServices]

The programmer just added another piece to this and has added;

"What I'm suggesting is like a 'symbolic' link in Unix . There are no different IP involved. Only IP will be Site B for example. We store everything on same server and virtual directory map to another folder on same server and its intranet and no visibility outside server"

While I understand what he's saying. Site B won't get the benefit of image hotlinking if it had the same images stored on its own domain and I just this since the coding specifically says "site.com/images", it's just not hiding it correctly and again, even if it does effectively hide it, is it truly invisible to Google that that is going on. And if it's not invisible, will it send off more red flags and look suspicious to Google. I really don't want to risk that. I just wonder if I'm over-reacting to this. I don't think that I am.

[EGOL]

More and more people are placing their images and other large files on cloud servers because they sometimes offer a cost advantage and they sometimes allow a website to load faster.

Because of this I don't think that Google is going to give a site a huge penalty if they are pulling content from a second domain.   This is being done by some of the highest quality and most popular sites on the web.

However, I think like you and have all of my images on my own domain.  Then if people are hotlinking them they will be coming from my site and I will get any credit for that - if google smiles about it, which I am not sure that they do.