image links offer any value?

[Marfola]

All the evidence suggests that text links bring more value to the link than image links. But images can create a very different effect for the user and it isn’t always possible to convert an image link to a text link via a style sheet. So here’s my question. Do image links offer any value at all? Is there any link value in creating the image in flash rather than with the <IMG> tag in HTML.

[tedster]

Yes, image links still count as a link in the calculation of PageRank. But because there is no text, you do lose that keyword-specific punch, Google will look at the text in the image's alt attribute, but that isn't scored nearly as powerfully as visible anchor text in a text link.

[fishfinger]

Read a thread the other day from a webmaster who had blocked hotlinking from MySpace (mainly to clear it out of his referrers log) only to find rankings slip from 1st to 4th. The links were related to what he did i.e. the MySpace pages were from people whose hobbies and posts were similar to the images and theme on his site. In Google's eyes they were obviously relevant genuine votes.

[tedster]

That's an interesting report, fishfinger. What is commonly called "image hotlinking" is really a src= attribute, and not a true link - that is, it's not an anchor element. I've often wondered how Google looks at cross-domain image sourcing. Last year, that was one trick that seemed to help a new domain avoid a long stay in the "sandbox".

[jomaxx]

Yes, direct image hotlinking is different from an HREF link, which is what the original poster was talking about.

I'm pretty sure image linking would be of nil value in terms of Google's search results, but it might well be a factor for getting ranked in Google Images. It is a kind of a vote, after all.