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Google's John Mueller said again that there is no specific SEO benefit for hosting your images on your own domain name. You can host them on your domain name or host them on another domain name, it shouldn't impact how well that image ranks.
But John does say you may want to host it on your domain name so you have more control if you switch CDNs in the future.
Here is John's tweet:
It doesn't matter how you host the images, there's no SEO-bonus for having them on the same host/domain. However, since changing image URLs is "hard", I'd use your own hostname for the CDN (avoid https://t.co/Y1ND46l9ij and use https://t.co/fWMc6CFPZ0), so you can change CDNs.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) March 5, 2019
Rand Fishkin posted on Twitter shortly after that he heard otherwise:
Is this true now? If so, must have changed recently b/c I saw a lot of image SEO traffic bumps moving images from CDN/subdomain to main domain in the last few years... https://t.co/muaEaJ4apv
— Rand Fishkin (@randfish) March 5, 2019
Glenn Gabe said no, it works fine either way:
I have a number of clients using CDNs for images that rank extremely well in image search. That's across industries.
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 5, 2019
We here host images on S3 and use the amazon URL, not our own domain name. When we first started using S3, they didn't have using your own domain as an option. I should probably switch it so that if I ever do move to another CDN that I can easily manage that switch but for now, I believe our images rank well.
As long as the landing page URL is your domain name, you should be fine.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Comments:
Adam Heaton
03/06/2019 04:05 pm
"It shouldn't image how well that image ranks" should be "It shouldn't impact how well that image ranks"
Eric Sopp
03/06/2019 05:41 pm
That's great news for WP-Stateless plugin users on WordPress.
sailboat
03/06/2019 06:06 pm
Except for the fact 99% WP sites have malware
Kevin Uriel Fonseca
03/06/2019 08:54 pm
That'z probably on your side only. There are plenty of users who have never been victims of hacking and/or malware but this resides more in the coder of you current theme/plug-in than in the WordPress maintenance team.
sailboat
03/06/2019 08:59 pm
You obviously missed yesterday's TC article titled "99% of WP sites are infected with malware" ... im sure your LAMP skills are red hot dog, nobody cares.
Marston Gould
03/07/2019 05:21 am
I've tested both ways and I would say it depends. I've found that images work just like other pages. If you concentrate page rank to these links, they will rank. If you don't, they won't. If they have good external links, they will. (all else being equal). That being said, have generally seen better image performance when under same subdomain vs. external domain (or www.domain.com/blahblah better than like cloudfront.com/blahblah) or cloudfront.domain.com/blahblah
Lie Detector
03/07/2019 06:46 am
BULLSHIT
Frost
03/07/2019 12:49 pm
and what if you embed images from Flickr or something? is that hurt your SEO "points" and site reputation? or just you will get less traffic in Google Image Search (who cares)
chicagoseo
03/07/2019 06:35 pm
Wait a minute, Wait uh mi nut!!!! Lets look at this from all angles. Images on your site like your logo/brand -- uhh it MATTERS. How do you expect to be a resource how many "fingers" are pointing back to you. Image search?? hello... There was just an google image update where users can click to your website and it also sites the domain name. Alt tags and schema -- Hello... all signals for SEO. -- If you're just trying to get us to react to your post -- Job well done.
Richard Race
10/20/2019 10:33 pm
I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that a person's claim is 100% accurate; solely based on the fact that they work at google. My idea is: if this google employee was THAT good at SEO; he would leave his corporate enslavement and start an SEO business. I have a hunch that this information is not 100% accurate.
Valter Magnaroli
05/08/2020 02:05 pm
Bom mesmo é o cara que trabalha com truques de marketing pra tentar ranquear um resultado em uma página de buscas, né? O sujeito que trabalha no Google não é bom... Cada uma...
D L
05/11/2020 08:19 pm
Muller is known for getting it wrong. He's a crawling guy, not a ranking guy, and has contradicted Matt Cutts in the past on the nofollow/disallow issue for example and been proven wrong when guidelines and console advice both finally got updated to prove Matt Cutts right. Muller is utterly clueless and spews nonsense on a regular, regarding the finer points of ranking in favour of lazy techies and disfavouring nuanced but real search quality signals. Rank Fishkin rightly challenged him.
Babbler187
02/11/2021 01:00 pm
There is no such article (any more) ...
Syed Anas
09/12/2023 02:47 pm
Hi I have questions
Syed Anas
09/12/2023 02:48 pm
Can we do images submission again and again on same domain