(Entry was posted by Allison Lee on this post in the Dumb SEO Questions community on Facebook, 08/12/2021).

Toxic backlinks stemming from images

Hi, can anyone offer advice on how to handle toxic backlinks stemming from images that people are posting via an online app/software? For context, I noticed that a website had thousands of toxic links. However, when I dug further, they`re all image links from users who use the software to post images to their own sites. Not sure how to interpret or handle this.

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YOUR ANSWERS

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

Tim Capper: So a tool has told you they are toxic ?

I would not worry about image file "toxic links" - google is pretty good at realising what is going on.

I have a site with over 300K of these, because its an image site - all the tools freak out - but no manual penalty or noticeable algorithmic penalty.
Allison Lee: Tim Capper Yes, specifically SEMRush. They dinged all of those links as toxic, and then recently lowered the DA of the site significantly (even though there doesn`t seem to be any other big change or indication that the site is performing worse than before).

I`m relieved to hear that it may not be reason for panic!
Michael Martinez: "toxic backlinks stemming from images that people are posting via an online app/software?"

Since those links cannot hurt your SEO they are not "toxic".

They might be sapping your bandwidth, which could affect server performance. But there you`ll need to implement hotlinking protection. Your Web hosting account dashboard may have an option for that.
Allison Lee: Michael Martinez Ooh thank you for the insight. I`ll look into that. Appreciate you pointing that out!