Allow Hotlinking to Images or not?

[dailypress]

Should we allow hotlinking or should we disable that option to prevent forums to use your picture while using the wrong context making Google even more confused about your website images.

Since I use a watermark on all my photos Its free advertisement. Do you recommend allowing hotlinks to images when I can afford the extra bandwidth?

Should we disbale the option right at the begining of developing our websites?

[tedster]

I'd say block the hotlinking. For one thing, hotlinking from certain sites can get your images stuck in the Safe Search filter for Image Search.

[ken_b]

For one thing, hotlinking from certain sites can get your images stuck in the Safe Search filter for Image Search.

Huh, I guess I've been asleep at the keyboard again because I hadn't heard this before.

I've labeled my images and not blocked hot linking for two main reasons, free advertising, and goodwill in my niche.

So what to do now?

Does the type of subject of the images make a difference when it comes to getting stuck in safe search?

[tedster]

I often let images get hotlinked because of the free ,promotion. But when image search itslef is a significant part of any marketing paln, then getting stuck in the Safe Search filter is no joke. It really "shouldn't" happen - it's more like a bug and I'd like to see it handled. But it's been this way for while.

[ken_b]

Yeah, I can see where this could be a real problem.

So how do you tell if your images are getting stuck in safe search?

I did a site: search in images and it returned a couple thousand of my images. I also did a couple searches for typical images from my site and my images were near the top of the image results.

[tedster]

You can use the "Preferences" link to the right of the Google Image Search box to switch the Saqfe Search filtering level. You will see immediately if you have any problem.

[dailypress]

Im assuming disabling the option (now that I have several hotlinked images linked to my site) wont cause any penalty or SEO dis-advantages. Correct?

[ken_b]

Thanks Tedster.

You can use the "Preferences" link

I did that and it looks like this (these numbers just show the ratio of images in each type of search):

2.0 images with Safe search completely off
1.7 images with moderate safe search on
1.5 images with strict safe search on

So apparently I am being impacted by this.

Do sites that find they have this problem and then start to block hot linking recover, and if so, is there any kind of likely time frame?

[tedster]

Whatever "the option" does technically, it would be specific to your software - so it's hard to say exactly what it does on your interface. However, it is unlikely to hurt your current situation unless your images as long as Google's image-bot can still spider them.

The one downside might be if your images are widely hotlinked and then, when the hotlink no longer works, those sites all remove the hotlink. In my experience, hotlinking site do not do this very often.

[dailypress]

Thanks guys.

I also did a site: search

The strict safe search on reduced my images by 2% and the other two options gave the exact same result.