Image SEO question

[RaymondM]

Hey guys,
As I'm just learning SEO, my question might sound a bit silly, so don't get mad at me Here is a thing:

For example, if someone finds my image (hosted on my server) through images.google.com, copys the url link (mysite.com/images/image.jpg) and puts it in his own website as img src (without a link to my site). Does this gives any SEO value for my site?

Ray.

[cprpoker]

No. None.

This is called hotlinking and is frowned upon. They are essentially (albeit in very small doses) stealing bandwidth from you as well as using your images without proper attribution (in most cases). If they properly attributed the image to you then they would like be text linking back to you and THEN you would get some SEO benefit.

hotlinking - Google Search

[RaymondM]

I see..
the question came up, when I saw it in search.yahoo.com "linkdomain:mysite" inlinks section..

What about <a href="mysite/images/image.jpg">mysite/images/image.jpg</a> ? I have someone linked to my image in a way like this.

[Michael Martinez]

Hotlinks do seem to help promote your images to the top of Google Image Search (and probably other engines' image search).

I have yet to run across anyone who had found a way to generate conversions from hotlinked images.

I usually block hotlinking myself.