International Image SEO - one host vs multiple hosts

[oline123]

I've got 3 sites (same name) located in Australia, US and UK. Currently these sites are all pulling images (I own) from 1 location.

I'd like to create image XML sitemaps for each of these sites.

As I see it, my options are:

1. Keeping the images hosted in the 1 place and creating image XML sitemaps for each of the 3 sites (which seems to be technically ok because https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/178636?hl=en&ref_topic=20986 states that if the image URL isn't on the same domain, both domains need to be verified in Webmaster Tools). However, is there a risk here that the sitemaps will conflict because they are pulling from images on the same host?

2. Hosting the images locally (ie. the same images will be hosted in 3 locations) and applying hreflang in the sitemap.

Does anyone know which of these options are best (obviously #1 would be more convenient), or whether there are any other options for attacking this issue?

Thanks!

[dotfly]

What I can tell you from our experiences is that pulling pictures from a different website (as long as it is also hosted on a differnet server) makes sense according to the performance of the site where you display the pictures.

As long as you have verified the sites within WMT you don`t have to worry - if you have outsourced pictures and they are used by several other sites which you also own or maintain, there is no problem using a picture sitemap for several times and all your domains.

Having thousands of pictures in a shop at least means to consider outsourcing the sources of your pictures and pulling them to the original site. You have to think about how much pictures you have - I would always recommend option 1 as you already mentioned...