Are links to images valuable?

[vero]

If a site which wants to sell "widgets" also has a number of pictures of widgets, and other sites hotlink to these images, does that help or hurt the html pages PR? In other words, how does a link to an image (say red-widget.jpg) compare to a link to an article as far as helping PR value for the actual html pages (red-widget.htm)?

[ruskin012]

I think this will not affect the PR of page.

[piatkow]

The worse case is probably that the other site will come up on an image search rather than yours.

Remember that the other site is using your bandwidth, if you are sharing the image between your own sites this won't be an issue for you but if it is being hotlinked on a popular third party site then it could cost you money.

[vero]

Thanks - I was about to block hotlinking via htaccess, but wanted to make sure there wasn't some benefit first.

[ruskin012]

According to me the most impressive factor affecting PR of website is quality of content. So, just do what you want. It will impact but only to a little extend.