SEO guys, question...
 

I noticed some sites have images named like "something-blah(l5ua03).jpg"

what is the purpose of the hash at the end of the image?

I would say image tracking, looking for people who are ripping off their images by giving a unique identifier to their images. I do that in my html code rather than images.
WG

They are probably just identifying the image themselves instead of making a proper alt tag.

Thanks for sharing, now I gotta go through each page by hand though :Oh crap :winkwink:

It's a lot easier to do a SHA-1 hash check on files, that way you can rename your images to anything and still be able to find people ripping off your exact images.
WG

would someone using one of the same images that you are using on your page cause problems for you?

do se's go that deep looking for duplicate content?

No, the se's would care if its the same image being used, its just the webmaster who wants to track who's ripping off their design/images/code. I'm guessing of course... not 100% sure.
WG

gotcha, thanks for clearing that up

I ripped all of your images... so sue me.

I think they have a CMS that gives them the possibility to name the pics however they want. It adds the hash to prevent from the event with more than one pic with exactly the same filename on the server.