Do Image links count as an IBL?

[advancedmerchant]

We have a number of customers that we manufacture hardware and software for on an OEM basis. Many of these OEM's use images from our site (with permission) to display the products. If the image link comes from our site, is there an IBL benefit, or am I just losing bandwidth?

If there is an IBL benefit, I can persuade all my OEMS to throw the images from MY Images directory, but if there is none, I can just have them store the images locally on their servers.

Both are available options, I am just not sure which way is more beneficial to me.

[kgun]

I think it does, especially with an

alt="semantic text"

attribute on the link.

[iandoc]

Mmm. My instinct tells me that there would be no benefit. Why would the search engine wish to give you PR juice just because you have provided a few images? Surely, common sense says they would not want to reward such a tactic.
But, I am happy to be corrected.

[deepsand]

From http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf we have the following.

2.2 Anchor Text

The text of links is treated in a special way in our search engine. Most search engines associate the text
of a link with the page that the link is on. In addition, we associate it with the page the link points to.
This has several advantages. First, anchors often provide more accurate descriptions of web pages than
the pages themselves. Second, anchors may exist for documents which cannot be indexed by a
text-based search engine, such as images, programs, and databases. This makes it possible to return web
pages which have not actually been crawled. Note that pages that have not been crawled can cause
problems, since they are never checked for validity before being returned to the user. In this case, the
search engine can even return a page that never actually existed, but had hyperlinks pointing to it.
However, it is possible to sort the results, so that this particular problem rarely happens.
This idea of propagating anchor text to the page it refers to was implemented in the World Wide Web
Worm [McBryan 94] especially because it helps search non-text information, and expands the search
coverage with fewer downloaded documents. We use anchor propagation mostly because anchor text
can help provide better quality results. Using anchor text efficiently is technically difficult because of
the large amounts of data which must be processed. In our current crawl of 24 million pages, we had

over 259 million anchors which we indexed.

Given the above, and the fact that Google does index images, there is good reason for expecting that IBLs to such do indeed pass PR.

Assuming that you have bandwidth sufficient for the resulting traffic, there is certainly nothing to be lost by having the images in question reside on your site, and there is the potential for gaining some boost in SERP from such traffic itself, even if not from PR passed via IBLs.

[Webnauts]

It is obvious links of images pass PR.

And I believe it would not have been a bad idea to add a descriptive title attribute to the link, maybe like using the same text as you do for the alt attribute, no matter if SE ignore or weight it. It improves your usability, so it can only be useful.

[coolguy27]

It counts, if the image has a link following it...

It can drives also traffic... Through Image Searches..

[ron angel]

Put your website url on every picture even if it is small at the bottom,
this way even if they don't count (I think they do) then people seeing them may put url into their browser you cant lose....

[jabo]

Originally Posted by kgun

I think it does, especially with an

alt="semantic text"

attribute on the link.

can you give an example on how you would code it on an image..

[ron angel]

Originally Posted by jabo

can you give an example on how you would code it on an image..

I don't see how the search engine can see the alt="semantic text"
attribute on the link. if somebody is linking directly to the picture & not going via your htm page.

[jordanmcclements]

I also think they DO count for something, and since bandwidth is SO cheap these days - why would you not allow hotlinking to your images?

NB most people won't use the alt text, but advancedmerchant was saying that he has OEMs that use his images with permission - so I guess he can make sure that they use the alt text...

[kgun]

Originally Posted by jabo

can you give an example on how you would code it on an image..

Code it on an image? Did I say that?

<a href="/innerpage/innerpage dot htm"><img src="http: / / images/usa dot gif" width="68" height="50" border="0" alt="American flag"></a>

See second link in my signature. That link was made years ago, so it could have been done better today, e.g. with a title attribute on it like Webnauts proposes.

[inertia]

Good question! One which I'm not too sure about. It would be easy to test though...

[kgun]

You mean "code" it on an image. If Bots could OCR scan an image to a bitmat, it should be possible to pull out the text (the link). But BOTs have problems indexing Flash and JavaScript and may be far from doing OCR scanning.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by advancedmerchant

We have a number of customers that we manufacture hardware and software for on an OEM basis. Many of these OEM's use images from our site (with permission) to display the products. If the image link comes from our site, is there an IBL benefit, or am I just losing bandwidth?

If there is an IBL benefit, I can persuade all my OEMS to throw the images from MY Images directory, but if there is none, I can just have them store the images locally on their servers.

Both are available options, I am just not sure which way is more beneficial to me.

Tricky question... You´re talking about links, but that's not what they are. You're talking about an image being shown in a website, but the image location is on another domain. So the site grabs the image from another site.

That's not a link!

[janeth]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Tricky question... You´re talking about links, but that's not what they are. You're talking about an image being shown in a website, but the image location is on another domain. So the site grabs the image from another site.

That's not a link!

And it is costing you bandwidth.

[inertia]

Isnt it a case of...

href= is a link, but src= is not!

[jordanmcclements]

Bandwidth is CHEAP, and if a million 'power tool' web sites link to your 'power tool' image - there has to be SOME significance attached to this!

When I say 'link' I mean 'hotlink' ('src=' (probably without the alt text)).

[kgun]

There are three concepts:

1. Uniform Resource Locator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Least general)
2. Uniform Resource Identifier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3. Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs) (most general)

"Even this simple model highlights a number of differetn linking concepts - which in turn indicate aspects that, if changed, can lead to more complex and sophisticated linking. To start with, we have resources - an addressable unit of information or service. In other words, basically anything that we are able to request, including Web pages, XML documents, images, audio clips, program outputs, etc. A resoure (in the URI sense of the word) is not necessarily a computer-related thing, but could at least conceptually, be anything you would like to deal with, such as paper documents or animals or whatever. Indeed, by utilising standards for addressing fragmenmts of these things, we can also treat fragments as resources. It is worth noting that Web standards - in particular RFC-2396 (Berners Lee et al, 1998 ) - distinguishes between addressing a whole resource (referred to as an identifier, and typically implemented using Universal Resource Identifiers) and addressing a particular sub-resource (implemented using resource-type-specific fragment identifiers.)"

Source: http://www.binarything.com/binarythi...DavidLowe1.pdf

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by jordanmcclements

Bandwidth is CHEAP, and if a million 'power tool' web sites link to your 'power tool' image - there has to be SOME significance attached to this!

When I say 'link' I mean 'hotlink' ('src=' (probably without the alt text)).

So if I create a page, and use images from other sites like Google, Amazon, New York Times (by src="h ttp://www.amazon.com/somedirectory/someotherdirectory/image.jpg") that somehow would give me an SEO benefit?

That would be too easy, wouldn't it?


Added:

I guess I understand better now what you´re saying. more related to the fact that your image is used by many other sites.

Probably that image will be the only thing that gets a benefit. The site itself not as the only reference that is made is to the image, not to the site it self.

Interesting idea though, this one I will have to ponder on for a while.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by inertia

Isnt it a case of...

href= is a link, but src= is not!

yes that is the case as far as I understand the original question.

[kgun]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

So if I create a page, and use images from other sites like Google, Amazon, New York Times (by src="h ttp://www.amazon.com/somedirectory/someotherdirectory/image.jpg") that somehow would give me an SEO benefit?

That would be too easy, wouldn't it?

Isn't that an UBL?

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by ron angel

Put your website url on every picture even if it is small at the bottom,
this way even if they don't count (I think they do) then people seeing them may put url into their browser you cant lose....

Why would he want to risk alienating his own customers?

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by kgun

Isn't that an UBL?

UBL?

If you mean IBL, then no, that's not an IBL.

[ron angel]

Originally Posted by deepsand

Why would he want to risk alienating his own customers?

why would/how he alienate his customers he owns the pictures if they want to link to them its up to them, as is him putting his url on them.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by ron angel

why would/how he alienate his customers he owns the pictures if they want to link to them its up to them, as is him putting his url on them.

As described by the OP, his customers appear to be resellers of his firms products.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by inertia

Isnt it a case of...

href= is a link, but src= is not!

Both are hyperlinks; the difference lies in the action-ability. The former is used where action is to be deferred, i.e. conditional upon the user's requesting the resource; the latter, where action is to be immediate, i.e. the resource is immediately requested & rendered.

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

It is obvious links of images pass PR.

And I believe it would not have been a bad idea to add a descriptive title attribute to the link, maybe like using the same text as you do for the alt attribute, no matter if SE ignore or weight it. It improves your usability, so it can only be useful.

Fully agree John

[ron angel]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Fully agree John

Originally Posted by Webnauts View Post
It is obvious links of images pass PR.

And I believe it would not have been a bad idea to add a descriptive title attribute to the link, maybe like using the same text as you do for the alt attribute, no matter if SE ignore or weight it. It improves your usability, so it can only be useful.

Fully agree John

not a good idea to use exact same text on the alt and title attribute
slight variation is better gives better seo as more different words to be picked up by search engines & avoids any duplicate content

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by ron angel

not a good idea to use exact same text on the alt and title attribute
slight variation is better gives better seo as more different words to be picked up by search engines & avoids any duplicate content

I see you and Jaan above agree. But I do not agree with you about having a slight variation between the alt and title attributes.

Since the title attribute has no weight in terms of SE rankings, it is just an alternative to alt attribute for cross browser compatibility. Firefox does not display alt attributes, so we use the title attribute instead.

Alt attribute and titles, both do not show up the same time when you hover those linked images.

John

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by incrediblehelp

Fully agree John

The thread starter was asking about if tons of <img src="http://www.threadstarterswebsite.com/img.jpg> in other sites, transfer PR to his own website.

That's not a link as far as I know.

However, as jordanmcclements suggested, it makes sense that there has to be some advantage if an image is hotlinked from other sites a lot. The question then is, what is that advantage and for who are the benefits.

My opinion: Only the image gains something with it. So in image search it may have an advantage.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

The thread starter was asking about if tons of <img src="http://www.threadstarterswebsite.com/img.jpg> in other sites, transfer PR to his own website.

That's not a link as far as I know.

However, as jordanmcclements suggested, it makes sense that there has to be some advantage if an image is hotlinked from other sites a lot. The question then is, what is that advantage and for who are the benefits.

My opinion: Only the image gains something with it. So in image search it may have an advantage.

Ouch. I though the topic was about linked images. I think somewhere in the thread it went entirely of-topic.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

The thread starter was asking about if tons of <img src="http://www.threadstarterswebsite.com/img.jpg> in other sites, transfer PR to his own website.

Unfortunately, the OP did not specify the type of link, i.e. "href" or "img src."

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

That's not a link as far as I know.

As noted above, both are links, differing only in their action-ability. And, the cited Google paper makes no distinction between link types with regards to indexing & the passing of PR. We do know though, from observation, that Google does indeed index images.

So, it may or may not be the case that the OP gains PR from such links.

[Webnauts]

And if the original posted added the tags to this thread, they were ibl and image link
Just to make things clear here...

[jordanmcclements]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

However, as jordanmcclements suggested, it makes sense that there has to be some advantage if an image is hotlinked from other sites a lot. The question then is, what is that advantage and for who are the benefits.

My opinion: Only the image gains something with it. So in image search it may have an advantage.

Good question (we will ignore the fact it may a bit off topic)...

I don't claim to know the answer, but like I said, bandwidth is cheap and if it gives any benefit at all then I would let it happen!

[innominds]

Definitely the image links pass some PR value. Moreover they are considered to be the largest traffic source. But you should decide regarding how does it helpful to you.

Bandwidth should not be a problem. These days many web hosting companies are providing unlimited bandwidth at affordable cost. So it should be a matter of bandwidth.