Googlebot-Image - does hotlink blocking work the same as robots.txt

[potentialgeek]

Today I saw this raw log data:

66.249.65.2 - - [24/Apr/2008:09:05:21 -0400] "GET /directory/images/example.jpg HTTP/1.1" 403 336 "-" "Googlebot-Image/1.0"

Does that 403 error mean Google failed to cache the pic? (MSN tried to cache yesterday and got the same error.)

p/g

[tedster]

Does that 403 error mean Google failed to cache the pic?

Yes - to be more precise, your server did not give the file to the bot. Whether the file makes it into Google's cache or not is the next step in the process. Not all that is successfully spidered ends up in the cache.

It's not the same as a robots.txt disallow (for example, it wouldn't work for a removal request) but the net result could be the same in time.

[potentialgeek]

Good. Thanks.