Image Backlinks - Less Weight?

Does anyone have solid evidence or proof that getting a backlink from say a button exchange has less weight in the SEs than a text only link?

 

You don't have the keyword rich anchor text advantage.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by less weight, but it definitely has less semantic meaning, since Google uses anchor text as an important part of their ranking algorithm. If you're asking if image alt text (on a linked image) has less weight than the anchor text on a regular link, then yes.

 

anchor text is not possible with pictures ..
With text links you can have anchor text -> chasing for keywords

 

I disagree with you guys. I have seen specific examples of ALT TAGS and Image Links being extremely powerful, possibly more powerful than text links.

Since most spammy link trading is text links, I think the engines are giving more credence to image links. ALT TAGS are definitely being counted as anchor text for these links.

Try it, you'll like it.

 

I don't think that alt text is as heavy as anchor text in assigning keywords to the site, but the link is in my opinion not worth less in terms of PR.

 

I would agree it has less weight, but still very valuable imho.

 

I think anchor text is better as well but giving less weight to text links and more to images with alt tags would be a good way for google to stop spam.

 

mad4: well, I can't really agree with you. Google gives less weight to alt text because it is not normally visible to the user and thus easier to spam...People would simply put a lot of small images on their pages with spammy alt-text. You don't even have to ruin your design to do that (as opposed to text links)....so I can't see any reason why your prop would stop spam.

 

Good point. Lucky I don't work for google.