Google Images Search

[Mac 5]

I have noticed on our web stats we have 404 Document Not Found errors for old images that are no longer on our site. I could tell by the log that the error came from someone searching Googles Images. I repeated the search myself for the title of the .jpg file and found the thumbnail of a photo I took off our site a year ago. When I clicked on the thumbnail it brought me to the page on our site that originally had that image with a broken image on the top of the page. How long does Google keep old pages in their database before they are deleted. I can tell by my log Google has spidered our page a week ago, but the images tab still has an outdated photo. Since someone searching for images is probably looking to "steal" the image and download it as free clip art, I'm going to continue to take old images off our server.

[simonm]

Mac 5

What's your web address, I want to see if there are any images worth stealing!

Incidentally, we are just about to start putting our image bank on line for almost free use - in exchange for a web link that is.

The prototype page is here (http://www.midkentwater.co.uk/photoalbum/photoalbum1.htm) which should be followed by about 200 additional water company related images over the next few weeks.

[revsorg]

I've often wondered how the google image search system works. It seems like it is compiled by humans, although this is only guesswork. It's the only explanation I can think of for why there are so many broken image links.

[nakulgoyal]

Don't you think they use simple caching ?

[greeneagle]

We rarely name an image by a topic specific name that would make sense to a spider. Never seen one of our images listed, seems to work fine.

[redcircle]

We rarely name an image by a topic specific name that would make sense to a spider. Never seen one of our images listed, seems to work fine.

So you aren't using alt tags either?

[bmchild]

either way it really doesn't seem like they've done much with it recently. I've got images listed that are older than 6 months and my new ones (created sometime last summer) are no where to be found.

[touristips]

Pulled thiis from one of my ezines that I subscribe to:
This is a cool idea we received from a reader.
We've printed it just like we received it...

"A few days ago I was checking my server
logfiles and noticed that a lot of websites
were hijacking images from my website.
(Hijacking means linking directly to the image
instead of loading it from their own servers.)
In other words, like this...

http://www.yourdomain.com/image.jpg

So after that I tried to find a way to avoid
this bandwidth-wasting problem. I was lucky and
found the following solution:

I put an .htaccess file into my picture directory.
The file contains the following info:


RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP REFERER} !^http://www.mydomain.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP REFERER} !^http://mydomain.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP REFERER} !^http://123.456.789.0

RewriteRule /* http://www.mydomain.com/someimage.jpg [R,L]

This looks a bit technical but it's actually
very simple. It checks if the refering page
that tries to load the image comes from my own
domain (or own IP). If that's not the case,
an alternate image is returned. (The image is
specified on the last line). You can just
copy and paste this into your own .htaccess
file AS IS, making sure to replace your own
domain information.

So far so good but where is the fre e advertising?
The image you specify in the last line will be
displayed on the website that tried to hijack
from your site. You can make this image anything
you want, so why not add some advertising? Like...

"Buy my product, go to http://www.mydomain.com"

Everyone visiting the page will see your ad!
Obviously this works best for sites that have
images that are susceptible to hijacking, but
you might even deliberately place a bunch of
high-bandwidth clipart on your site to ENTICE
people to link to them!"

[minstrel]

What a neat idea, touristips!

Well except for the part about trying to entice people... that wouldn't work if they tested the link at all. But if it's already happening, it might take a while for the thief to discover the banner and during that time you've had free advertising.

And as I typed that, I thought of another possible drawback - what if it's a porn site or something equally unsavory like a "hate crime" site? People might think you're advertising on the site...

I think I'd be inclined to go just with a large blank square with a smiley in the middle saying, "Nice try, bozo!