Google made what I would consider a logical clarification to its image SEO best practices help document. It now says don't upload the same image under different URL/file names to your site, even if you embed that image on different pages on your site.
Google explained why it made this update, saying, "We updated the Google Image SEO best practices to clarify that URLs for images should be referenced consistently for easier crawling on larger websites."
The new text added to the page says:
If an image is referenced on multiple pages within a larger website, consider the site's overall crawl budget. In particular, consistently reference the image with the same URL, so that Google can cache and reuse the image without needing to request it multiple times.
Here is a screenshot of what was added:
I suspect a lot of content management systems just make it too easy to upload the same image and swap out the file name with something new. This can cause confusion for Google, also, as Google said, impact your crawl budget (but I doubt all that much). The bigger thing for me is that now you have two or more of the same image, taking up unnecessary space on your server and confusing Google.
Google also said not do this even if you want to translate them into new languages. In fact, years ago, Google said it is fine to use the same image on multiple pages - so don't change the file name just to trick Google.
So why? I mean, I probably have done it before but I really try not to do this.
Forum discussion at X.
