Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does image domain name matter when using a CDN?
-
Has anyone does studies on using a different CDN domain name for images on a site? Here is an example:

or
http://cdn.mydomain.com/image.jpg>
mydomain.com ranks highly and many images show up in Google/Bing image searches. Is there any actual data that says that using your real domain name for the CDN has benefits versus the default domain name provided by the CDN provider? On the surface, it feels like it would, but I haven't experimented with it.
-
No, I understand. Thanks for jumping in. The only reason why said it was a uglier subdomain, just to express that - even that didn't have a impact impressions, traffic, or CTR on images in my case.
Note, I get 80k+ UV a month and I spend more time monitoring traffic sources and do date comparisons than I should. I have alerts that tell me if I loose x% of traffic on a landing page.
As you can see - a lot of GB - we get a lot of image traffic - no impact, with my ugly url that I wont even make a effort to change.
Joseph
-
It might be an ugly url but the content is still on your domain. In the question above it's about the image on their domain vs on the CDN's domain.
PS: didn't mean to hijack this question, I am also very interested to know the answer for the same question

-
WP engine is a wonderful host I use them as well.
A content delivery network will have 0 negative effect because of the way the code has changed on your website.
Simply use a C name. Or don't it really doesn't matter
for instance you could have www.example.com
that in your DNS
create a C name cdn.example.com to the right allow for username-wpengine.domain.com
then everything looks like CDN.example.com
I believe WP engine will change that for you even however you guys are worried about things that do not matter
a content delivery network will make your website much faster and regardless of if you think the code is ugly or not
it does not make a difference nothing negative will happen only good things happen when you use a CDN I strongly suggest you use them on pretty much anything and do not worry about the coding.
I have a lot of sites with content delivery networks and every one of them ranked better after using CDN than before.
Sincerely,
Thomas
-
No, I recently switched to wpengine ( http://moz.com/perks - we get 4 months free ) and they have a CDN. I haven't noticed any impact on my image results/impressions and the url for the image is pretty ugly like: username-wpengine.domain.com/2013/05/image.jpg or something like that.
From what I seen, I dont think that matters. I hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should we use Cloudflare
Hi all, we want to speed up our website (hosted in Wordpress, traffic around 450,000 page views monthly), we use lots of images. And we're wondering about setting up on Cloudflare, however after searching a bit in Google I have seen some people say the change in IP, or possible sharing of Its with bad neighbourhoods, can really hit search rankings. So, I was wondering what the latest thinking is on this subject, would the increased speed and local server locations be a boost for SEO, moreso than a potential loss of rankings for changing IP? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tiromedia1 -
Old domain to new domain
Hi, A website on server A is no longer required. The owner has redirected some URLS of this website (via plugin) to his new website on server B -but not all URLS. So when I use COMMAND site:website A , I see a mixture of redirected URLS and not redirected URLS.Therefore two websites are still being indexed in some form and causing duplication. However, weirdly when I crawl with Screaming Frog I only see one URL which is 301 redirected to the new website. I would have thought I'd see lots of URLs which hadn't been redirected. How come it is different to using the site:command? Anyway, how do I move to the new website completely without the old one being indexed anymore. I thought I knew this but have read so many blogs I've confused myself! Should I: Redirect all URLS via the HTACESS file on old website on server A? There are lots of pages indexed so a lot of URLs. What if I miss some? or Point the old domain via DNS to server B and do the redirects in website B HTaccess file? This seems more sensible but does this method still retain the website rankings? Thanks for any help
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
How can you promote a sub-domain ahead of a domain on the SERPs?
I have a new client that wants to promote their subdomain uk.imagemcs.com and have their main domain imagemcs.com fall off the SERPs. Objective? Get uk.imagemcs.com to rank first for UK 'brand' searches. Do a search for 'imagem creative services' and you should see the issue (it looks like rules have been applied to the robots.txt on the main domain to exclude any bots from crawling - but since they've been indexed previously I need to take action as it doesn't look great!). I think I can do this by applying a permanent redirect from the main domain to the subdomain at domain level and then no-indexing the site - and then resubmit the sitemap. My slight concern is that this no-indexing of the main domain may impact on the visibility of the subdomains (I'm dealing with uk.imagemcs.com, but there is us.imagemcs.com and de.imagemcs.com) and was looking for some assurance that this would not be the case. My understanding is that subdomains are completely distinct from domains and as such this action should have no impact on the subdomains. I asked the question on the Webmasters Forum but haven't really got anywhere
Technical SEO | | nathangdavidson2
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/1Avupy3Uw_o/hu6oLQntCAAJ Can anyone suggest a course of action? many thanks, Nathan0 -
Image Search
Hello Community, I have been reading and researching about image search and trying to find patterns within the results but unfortunately I could not get to a conclusion on 2 matters. Hopefully this community would have the answers I am searching for. 1) Watermarked Images (To remove or not to remove watermark from photos) I see a lot of confusion on this subject and am pretty much confused myself. Although it might be true that watermarked photos do not cause a punishment, it sure does not seem to help. At least in my industry and on a bunch of different random queries I have made, watermarked images are hard to come by on Google's images results. Usually the first results do not have any watermarks. I have read online that Google takes into account user behavior and most users prefer images with no watermark. But again, it is something "I have read online" so I don't have any proof. I would love to have further clarification and, if possible, a definite guide on how to improve my image results. 2) Multiple nested folders (Folder depth) Due to speed concerns our tech guys are using 1 image per folder and created a convoluted folder structure where the photos are actually 9 levels deep. Most of our competition and many small Wordpress blogs outrank us on Google images and on ALL INSTANCES I have checked, their photos are 3, 4 or 5 levels deep. Never inside 9 nested folders.
Technical SEO | | Koki.Mourao
So... A) Should I consider removing the watermark - which is not that intrusive but is visible?
B) Should I try to simplify the folder structure for my photos? Thank you0 -
Help: domain name change and Google News
Hi. I work for a regional news source, and our (separate) Spanish-language news publication recently changed its domain name. The publication lost its Google News inclusion. Most of their traffic came from Google News, so traffic tanked. They're trying to get back in. They reapplied but didn't get approved. They're now in the 30-day waiting period to reapply again. The website is run by a third-party company, which handled the domain name change in April (2015). That company has been running their site for a couple of years. Our in-house devs' hands are tied on helping, because we (at the mother company) don't manage their site. This third party has not been responsive. The Spanish pub folks have reached out to me to help them prepare for Round 2 of reapplication. I'm the mothership in-house SEO, but I've never experienced this situation before. Because everything seems to be in order besides the ham-handed changes, my best advice to them so far is: You'll have to wait until Google gets to know you again, unfortunately. Does that sound right? Any pointers out there for bringing their best possible A-game to the next round?
Technical SEO | | christyrobinson1 -
Any way around buying hosting for an old domain to 301 redirect to a new domain?
Howdy. I have just read this QA thread, so I think I have my answer. But I'm going to ask anyway! Basically DomainA.com is being retired, and DomainB.com is going to be launched. We're going to have to redirect numerous URLs from DomainA.com to DomainB.com. I think the way to go about this is to continue paying for hosting for DomainA.com, serving a .htaccess from that hosting account, and then hosting DomainB.com separately. Anybody know of a way to avoid paying for hosting a .htaccess file on DomainA.com? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SamTurri0 -
Use of + in url good or bad?
Hi, I am working on a SEO project for a client.
Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
Some of the urls have a + between the keyword.
like www.example.com/make+me+happy/ Is this good or bad for seo?
Or is it maybe better to use - ? Thanks!0 -
How to push down outdated images in Google image search
When you do a Google image search for one of my client's products, you see a lot of first-generation hardware (the product is now in its third generation). The client wants to know what they can do to push those images down so that current product images rise to the top. FYI: the client's own image files on their site aren't very well optimized with keywords. My thinking is to have the client optimize their own images and the ones they give to the media with relevant keywords in file names, alt text, etc. Eventually, this should help push down the outdated images is my thinking. Any other suggestions? Thanks so much.
Technical SEO | | jimmartin_zoho.com0