Does hotlink image protection negatively affect SEO?

[Dynapro]

Does hotlink image protection negatively affect SEO?

[neelseowork]

Hotlink protection prevents other websites from directly linking to files and pictures on your website. So I don't think it will affect negatively. but Image SEO will be impected.

[shimar456]

It does not negatively affect SEO because you have not blocked crawlers, instead you have blocked hotlinking your images. Search bots can still crawl your images, index them and show them in search results. Google Image search does not hotlink your images, instead the thumbnails generated in the image search results show images from gstatic.com and when someone clicks on them they can see the image on your site in an iframe.

[swaroop97]

Hotlinking is a serious problem for many Joomla sites, especially those that contain a lot of images, also inside articles. It is a bad practice because: It steals your hosting bandwidth (account resources) and costs site owner's money. It may also impact your site's performance

[swaroop23]

It does not negatively affect SEO because you have not blocked crawlers, instead you have blocked hotlinking your images. Search bots can still crawl your images, index them and show them in search results. ... Using the same code you can allow specific domains to hotlink your images.

[swaroop97]

It does not negatively affect SEO because you have not blocked crawlers, instead you have blocked hotlinking your images. Search bots can still crawl your images, index them and show them in search results. ... Using the same code you can allow specific domains to hotlink your images.