I had to restore a high traffic blog and during I missed a few image folders. So all the image links were broken. I couldn't fix it due to -other commitments.. - I was away from the net.... -I get 1000-1500 visitors from Google Images that don't convert so I didn't care much.. - I never thought missing images would be consider as broken links.. Looks like they do... I mean missing images indeed are broken links.. Hard Lesson.... I lost ranking for a few good key words and traffic is down 1/6th overall.. I am sure it was the broken image links. I have fixed the links now.. But it is just wait and watch... A few broken links have cost me a lot...