ARE IMAGE EMBEDS A VALUABLE LINK STRATEGY?

Our hypothesis posited that embedding images from our website onto external platforms (such as Web 2.0 sites) would be recognized by Google as backlinks to our site. Specifically, we theorized that when an image hosted on our domain is embedded elsewhere on the internet with the direct image URL inserted into the “src” attribute of an <img> tag (without hyperlinking the image), Google’s algorithms would still identify and count these instances as backlinks to the image’s URL, thereby potentially influencing our site’s SEO performance. This strategy was predicated on initial observations from Google Search Console reports that appeared to classify image embeds as backlinks, despite the absence of a traditional hyperlink structure. The test aimed to verify the sustainability and reliability of image embeds as a method for link building, assessing whether such embeds would consistently be recognized as backlinks over time or if they were merely artifacts of a temporary glitch within Google’s indexing processes.

Recently we discovered Google reporting image embeds as backlinks in our Search Console report…

These were coming up as backlinks to the image itself. Google was reporting the image URL that had been put in the “src” code on the website. This was not a hyperlinked image but simply an image on the page that had the src set to the image of our website.

You can see an example below.

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