23 replies to this topic

[earlpearl]

A recent blog post by Aaron Wall, and a comment on the piece had me look at image traffic to our websites:

 

http://www.seobook.com/rich-listings

 

On January 23 Google made an announcement with regard to presenting images in image search:

 

http://googlewebmast...age-search.html

 

Of course Google announced this would be a big improvement!!!

 

Improvement or not???   Most webmaster comments since then have noted that their traffic dropped as per the first comment in the Aaron Wall piece, the comments  http://www.webpronew...e-sites-2013-01 and comments Barry Schwartz found at threads at WMW and digital point.

 

For some strange reason on one of our local sites we have an image that has been ranked #1 for a keyword.   Its entirely irrelevant to the site and its localness.   Regardless it gets an inordinate amount of traffic from around the web.

 

Since a few days after the announcement;  image traffic to the site for that image and the page on which it sits...is down over 50%.

 

I wouldn't want to depend on image traffic at this point in time.

 

This is simply another case of google scraping the web, building an index, creating its own pages from that content....and killing content providers.

 

Not a healthy environment IMHO.

[iamlost]

Thanks for bringing the story to Cre8, earlpearl. I have been following it with interest but as I have had images blocked from SEs for years didn't have anything substantive to say.

Other than: told you all so.

Perhaps the most actionable thread on the topic is Google Images' New (Bing-like) Layout, WebmasterWorld.
Note: the thread is over 300 posts and it covers several approaches and concerns so careful reading is required to follow each one.

Edited by iamlost, 20 February 2013 - 12:35 PM.

[earlpearl]

@IAMLost    LOL.   (spank me, daddy).   

 

I was reading from that WMW thread chronologically and just left after a couple of pages.

 

What is the value of blocking the SE's to your images, pre and post this change.  Its simply an issue I never encountered.

 

With regard to the change by google, it appears from the first 50-60 posts plus my experience plus the comments I saw in the other threads I posted....most webmasters are feeling a big loss.

 

Regardless of how google's change seems to have cut traffic to sites...what are the benefits to blocking SE's from your images ?

[iamlost]

The benefits of blocking SEs from images:

1. makes finding and scraping that much less likely - why look for mine when my competitors are served up so nicely by the SEs?

 

2. while I know that other webdevs get (or used to) a lot of traffic from SE image search I found that, in my instance, the traffic volume and conversion percentage was not worth while. I tended to get as many attempting to hotlink as converting.

 

3. I could see from universal search that Google was going to be increasingly attempting to keep search traffic on their sites. So I decided to maintain presence via web search and minimise via the others - except for a few carefully selected marketing purpose items. Given #2 above it was an easy decision for me; others who agreed with my long view saw sufficient quality image search traffic to remain open; although some of thoses have now blocked wholely in part in the last month.

 

As always it is a business model real/perceived value decision, and what is best for one site/niche may not be for another.

Note: in my case I block from SEs not only images but their translators, prefetchers, cacheing, etc. It is my stuff for visitors on my sites except for what is best value for me marketing.

Edited by iamlost, 20 February 2013 - 02:42 PM.

[EGOL]

Before Google made this change one of my sites was receiving about 4000+ visitors per day from google image search and another 1500+ from images that are displayed in websearch. 

 

Not only are the images from image search sent to https://www.google.com/blank.html   but image clicks from websearch are sent there as well.

 

Of those 4000+ per day from image search and 1500 from websearch , I believe that less than 100 are actually visiting my site now.  (That is the number of referrals I am getting from https://www.google.com/blank.html

 

Google's tiny text at bottom of page that says....  "image may be subject to copyright" is inadequate.  It does not display the context of the image or any caption that gives credit to the creator or caption that explains ownership information.

 

You can read lots of interesting comments about this change at Slashdot....

http://search.slashd...osting-concerns
 

And this article is really interesting....

http://blog.dreamsti...asters_art38649

 

And if you want to complain about it you can go here....

https://www.change.o...-web-publishers

 

 

Now, if Google is republishing all of your images on https://www.google.com/blank.html today... are they going to be republishing your articles there tomorrow?

 

 

iamlost...  you better deindex your site from google in case that happens. 

Edited by EGOL, 20 February 2013 - 03:22 PM.

[earlpearl]

Thanks for the perspective.   Interesting.   With our sites being similar to what you described in that image search has traditionally not been a source for business and revenues, I simply ignored it, rather than considered all the consequences.

 

My most significant level of experience with your commentary is with what google is now calling Google+Local;  formerly known as google places page/ google places record/  google maps page.

 

One of the lessons there has been that the Local Page is Google's not your own!!!   Its a significant lesson.  With a long history of misinformation, duplicates, lost information, records that go kerplunk in the night      .....and the additional serious consequence that when the record's ranking strength mysteriously changes...it impacts serps in that more often than not the current manifestation of a google places record is a merged weight of organic strength, Places Strength, and the location of the business vis a vis the searcher.

 

So in the local arena...universal search and the google owned google places record can dramatically a site and a business in many ways, one significant issue has been the continued malfunctions internally within google+local over the years.

 

From our perspective the local pages that google places have created can be both a problem and a boon.   On the one hand the google local pages take potential customers off your site feeding them less interesting and compelling information.   The sites lose traffic to the google owned pages.    On the other hand the addition of specific content that IS google created....reviews....can be a huge boon.   Our smb's that operate well and give great customer service AND have great reviews, end up with a flow of new customers that read those reviews.

 

Of course that google content in the form of google local pages...does carry ads...and those damned ads are usually for your competitors!!!!

 

In any case I feel for those sites that are losing enormous volumes of traffic and feeling the financial implications.

 

As so often is the case with pronouncements from Google....To date this IS NOT a situation that is webmaster friendly, at least so far as I can see.

[Dr.Marie]

Interesting discussion.  I think that for some sites the image search changes are a good thing, but for others I think what Google is doing is almost criminal.  In earlpearl's case:

 

 

For some strange reason on one of our local sites we have an image that has been ranked #1 for a keyword.   Its entirely irrelevant to the site and its localness.   Regardless it gets an inordinate amount of traffic from around the web.

 

 

It sounds like you lost traffic but it is traffic that likely wasn't converting.  If this was the case, then the loss of hundreds or thousands of visitors is probably a good thing.  Even though it makes your analytics look a little less impressive, it reduces the load on your website and the amount of bandwidth you are eating up.  It sounds like the vast majority of the people who were coming to your site through image search really didn't want your site at all...they just wanted the image so I wouldn't lose any sleep over the fact that they are no longer coming.

 

I recently worked with the owner of an e-commerce site that had seen a large traffic drop.  A little digging showed that it was image search that caused the drop.  He lost about 1000 visitors per day.  However, his conversions stayed the same over that time.

 

However, there are some sites that are probably losing major business from this change.  On my veterinary site I have many posts that have unique pictures of medical conditions.  Before, if someone was shown my image in an iframe, they would see that the page had really relevant information and they would likely click through.  A percentage of those people who click through will click on ads and I will make money.

 

To me it seems like Google is being the ultimate scraper...taking my images and presenting them to people.  I suppose I could block them from search engines but part of the reason why I let Google see them is because I thought that having good images would bring traffic to my site.

Edited by Dr.Marie, 20 February 2013 - 04:26 PM.

[earlpearl]

@Dr. Marie:

 

You are right.  The loss of this particular traffic will have no impact.  I actually checked back to look at landing pages contributing to form contacts.   and it was less than .1 of 1%.  Truly negligible.  Yet the percentage of landing pages on that page was surprisingly substantial.

 

For us the change is more of interest and even more interesting to engage webmasters who use and rely on images to learn something.

 

IamLosts response enabled me to muse on the impact of a different google page....that takes/scrapes content.

 

As a search engine, google spends a lot of time taking the content of websites and turning them into google pages, while cutting into the traffic to the sites.   Not a healthy relationship in my mind.

 

Its a huge beast with astonishing impact.  

[jonbey]

I guess if you are selling the item in the photo then image search can work well (I certainly shop online with image search). But for everybody else, it is probably just a waste.

 

So maybe I will try and follow iamlost's method to see if that has a positive impact ..... maybe the positive will be less bandwidth? Although hotlinking is blocked.

[iamlost]

EGOL asked: Now, if Google is republishing all of your images on https://www.google.com/blank.html today... are they going to be republishing your articles there tomorrow?

 

Copyright generally allows fair use/dealing (depending on jurisdiction) and generally that plus the perception of value exchange is what has kept SEs, including Google, on the legal side of the tracks. An important point to remember is that copyright permission is supposed to be explicit, the potentially implicit permission granted by allowing, i.e. not blocking, SE bots actually has little/no legal standing.

HOWEVER

Given that few webdevs have the resources to take one or more large corporations to court for infringement means that the easy, simple, relatively inexpensive method is:

* register copyright on your content (not simply rely on natural copyright).

* block those SE bots that you feel are not doing you any good.

* use DMCA appropriately.

 

I consider their current image search behaviour infringement and I consider the size of pages shown from cache/fetch to be close to infringement. Which is why I decline to allow either.

[earlpearl]

Really glad we don't depend on image traffic for revenues or business:

 

Here is a screen shot of image traffic.  Note how image traffic dried up after google made the change:

 

Attached Thumbnails

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[TheAlex]

This is certainly bad form from Google, though the new image search will probably result in less bandwidth use as your whole webpage loaded in the background before. I'm sure one of Google's "pro's" when they announced this was that their tests had shown the new format resulted in more clicks to websites. :S

 

What do people think of a solution like this? It adds a watermark of your choice to any hotlinked images. I was thinking of adding some code to my htaccess file to show a small image in place of hotlinked images, though the last time I tried it, sometimes my website would load with every image replaced by the small replacement image.

[bobbb]

Sorry to jump in this late. Just caught on to this last week. I did not show images in my reports.

 

This actually caused an increase in usage. I looked at that solution above. Similar to what I had in place but I got caught since I allowed blank REFERER. That DOCUMENT_ROOT would seem to solve that. What I see is a lot of hits to images with blank referrer.

Facebook does this a lot too.

 

Short of blocking images from SEs that solution seems reasonable.

 

I also stopped reading the WebmasterWorld thread after about 10 pages.

 

though the last time I tried it, sometimes my website would load with every image replaced by the small replacement image.

Could this be the browser cache?

Edited by bobbb, 02 April 2013 - 12:20 PM.

[bobbb]

I installed a solution as in the link above "solution like this"

I monitored my traffic and mentally tested it for a few days with "my" solution. The hard part of testing was the negative logic. I eventually tuned it to how I liked it, then dropped it in. Been a few days and it does what I wanted it to do. Give them a hotlink image instead of a watermark. As small an image as possible or it defeats the purpose.
Now I don't server up 1000+ images for Google. Previously I had allowed blank referers but that's what killed me. Google now comes in with blanks with their new hotlink method. It's not perfect because HTTP_USER_AGENT and HTTP_REFERER are easily forged.

I still allow bing, yahoo, and google referers but am considering killing google.
The DOCUMENT_ROOT was found with testing (phpinfo).
I realised with testing that I needed to allow REQUEST_URIs like apple-touch-icon.png
 

 

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?mydomain.ca [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^https?://(.+\.)?google [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?bing.com/images [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?search.yahoo [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?thisgoodguy.ca [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !googlebot-image [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !msnbot-media [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !bingbot [NC]
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT} !^/this is specific to your hosting plan [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/hotlink.png
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/apple-touch-icon.*png
RewriteRule \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ http://mydomain.ca/hotlink.png [NC,R]
 

Edited by bobbb, 21 April 2013 - 11:33 PM.

[iamlost]

And now Bing is playing fast and loose with others' images: Bing Pins Your Images

 

I am so glad that I block my images et al from SEs (and other bots).

Note: I still have to send out (some) DMCAs to get my imges removed that were found on scraper sites.

Note: it is now critical to have your images well watermarked.

Note: I expect to be sending Pinterest even more DMCAs if this takes off.

[EGOL]

Note: I expect to be sending Pinterest even more DMCAs if this takes off.

 

I think that Pinterest should allow you to just click a flag and a DMCA is autogenerated and submitted.

 

Are you sending them a bill with each DMCA?

[LampardFC82]

anyone can help?i am new in this SEO industry. Is that any thread talking about "Google Image Search" How do i made my image or picture to be ranked well in google image search?

[bobbb]

Read the thread. I don't think you what to "be ranked well in google image search"

[mihaistamate]

The traffic you get from Google Images is valuable but you can get a lot of traffic from Pinterest too. The same principle is involved.

[Walter]

I was reading through some posts about Googles new image search . . . the usual complaints and then I found this post:

 

 

I am actually selling more products now, I have hotlinked google's logo in my header so it looks like my store is owned by google, sales are going through the roof now!

 

This kid is going places