Hosting images elsewhere (other than own website)

[Sleepytopia]

Does anyone know if there would be a problem having my product pictures hosted elsewhere rather than within my shopping cart hosting, ie, would it have an effect on load times or search engine optimisation.


can anyone help please, thanks

[Calibre Designs]

Have no idea but I am sure someone we be along soon.

[ken_uk]

It depends....

On the negative side there for each new host used there will be a new dns lookup to make when they visit the site, on the positive side, some browsers can only handle so many connections to a site at once, so having a page load from two sources can double the amount of available connections it has available, thereby having a positive effect on speed.

But the main issue will be the speed of the server itself - host them on a slow server, and your images will load slowly, and that will slow down the loading of pages on your site. Plus there are now two servers that have to be maintained, double the chances of a failure, or half the chance of total failure whichever way you choose to look at it.

As for seo, it should not have any negative effect on the main serps that I can think of, many people host images on third party servers.

[Sleepytopia]

thanks for that Ken

[Spiderden]

I would recommend keeping them on the same server. As Ken mentions above, you're doubling the chance of a server failure. If your own server goes down then the whole site is dead anyway. If the image hosting site dies then you're going to have a site with no images. This is one case where putting all your eggs in one basket is the better option.

An issue that hasn't been mentioned is SSL. If your site uses SSL, when it switches to https:// on a page containing one of the externally hosted images your customers will be presented with a site security error which won't do your conversion rate any favours.

[Sleepytopia]

brilliant! thanks Spiderden!

[RayB]

You've had some cracking advice above - all i can add is that I concur - best to host the images on your own site wherever possible

[Sleepytopia]

I always get fantastic advice on here Ray, answered my question perfectly

[123 Cart]

Also another point.

If this is for an ecommerce store and you want to install a SSL Certificate is will fail due to non secure content.

So yes as everyone has said images must be on your own server.