Image duplication on sites with geo-targeted sub-domains?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

If a site is duplicated for multiple countries, and geo-targeted accordingly, it makes sense to have all internal links point to the right subdomain.

The content in this example varies slightly (language, flavor etc) but some is shared, such as images.

While having all links share the proper subdomain.example.com format makes sense does that apply to images? At first thought it makes sense not to share anything but with images I'm wondering if having just one copy of an image and using it across each subdomain from just one url would be better.

[aristotle]

Will the image file name and alt tag vary from one language to another?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

It's by country and not by language so no, nothing will change if the primary language doesn't.

There would be one image, on the primary domain, that is referenced on the other sites via the same url/title/alt.

It's the same image, copying it and changing all that stuff would in fact be duplicating content. See what I'm getting at?

[tedster]

I never found images to be part of a duplicate "content" measure - only text. That said, there are two factors I'd consider in this area:

1. It is a best practice to serve images from a different sub-domain. This helps the browser do multi-threading and that speeds up the site. Given how much Google has trouble sorting out hot-linked images from the original site's ownership, I'd have no concerns about using the same sub-domain for each languages image files.

2. When you serve images to a site in a translated language, it can help rankings to translate the image names into the appropriate language. So even if the same image is being served from the same subdoomain, it pays to create a copy and rename the file with a translated filename.

[Leosghost]

Agree with Tedster .plus if you are allowing SE's to index your images ? you want to catch those searching for "chien" and "hund" etc ..even though it is the same "dog" picture you are showing them.

The alt text for each image is going to have to be in the language of each page anyway..so you'll already be doing most of the work.

SE's definitely wont score the images as "dupes" if done this way.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I appreciate the replies.

tedster, I've heard many times that it is a best practice to serve images from a different sub-domain but I can't find any solid documentation on how to ensure that the original article gets credit for the image and that they rank just as well as if on the same domain. Any suggestions on that?