My site traffic from Google images has jumped considerably in the last couple of months. Pre-September I had no links through from Google images and in October and November I had ~800/month. The links also corresponded to a big jump in bandwidth so it wasn't just Google changing their headers.
It seems like there have been some changes at Google Images the most interesting one being that it now features my Flickr images. If I search for tags I've used at Flickr like, for instance, tube signs, then lo, one of mine is now at the top of the results
The interesting thing is that whilst Google used to pay a *load* of attention to the filename of the image these searches don't correspond to anything in the filename, only the tags. The next image along from it has a filename that actually includes the words "tube signs" and yet ranks lower.
It makes sense for Google to be indexing Flickr but it's still a little cheeky. It would be interesting to see some of the server stats from Del.icio.us.
2 comments:
Yes, your profile is correct. Never try to program/code/develop 24/7; likely to cause insanity.
I have walked that path (and I'm not even very good at it).
I am trying to start a photography blog on WordPress/MovableType (??) and I've noticed google is doing the same with my images.
There's no .htaccess script to prevent this with the new way that Google has reset it's algorhythms with the RSS feeds and XML and started the "Google Images" project?
I would think if you could protect your images before (from direct linking) you should be able to again, unless you want the traffic -- however bandwidth is still at a premium and I've noticed that Google isn't willing to foot the bill for us with .com sites.
What's your thoughts on this?
(Short of, of course, meta tags that discourage the crawlers altogether.)
Thanks~
Thanks for your comments and glad you found me.
I haven't looked very closely but I'm not sure that the image bandwidth is being generated by Google. I think that it's coming from people linking through Google.
It would seem unlikely to me that Google is directly responsible for the extra bandwidth as
a) They don't have any particularly great image processing algorithms
b) Even if they did, they wouldn't reprocess the same image more than once - it doesn't make sense
Personally, I'm quite happy for the extra human traffic but I can imagine it might be hard if you're hosting a lot of images. Then again, if the bandwidth comes from human views then you're getting your required result, i.e. eyeballs. If you don't want eyeballs then make your pages members only.
I'm not sure if that answers your question and I certainly wouldnt' pretent to be an expert on Google's aims and procedures but it seems to me on balance that the traffic is worth having.