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NEW UPDATE: How to prevent the new Google Images from hotlinking to your original photos and high resolution files, and to protect your bandwidth ?? there is a solution which is ByREV WP-PICShield Plugin made by “Emilian Robert Vicol”, this solution only available for WordPress sites, you can download the plugin from the Author website, or your can download it from WordPress Plugin Directory website, the ByREV WP-PICShield is free (but you can always donate to support the author), if you have any problems with the plugin or any bugs you can always contact Emilian, his support is fast and professional. ~ 19 Feb 2013
Well, many photographers and webmasters agree with me, but this new Google image search is killing my sites and using my bandwidth and images, In the past few days (since 25th of Jan 2013) my page views have been cut in more than half while my bandwidth usage has increased – thanks to Google’s hotlinking for my photos.
I believe sites of photographers and other artists experience the same difficulties thanks to Google. I saw lots of photographers complaining online that their sites having a major drop with visitors.
The most of my traffic comes from Google image search, I’ve had Google images search in (my hotlink white list) so my visitors can be able to see my photos through Google search and at the same time they can visit my site, I’ve always had to code up to break the Google image frame, This “frame breaker” script which used to kill the Google frame when people went to see my images they get redirected to the image page at my site.
But now they (the users, visitors) can download my photos without even seeing the site after the new Google search update ,and the traffic on my sites is down more than 60%.
The new Google image search costs bandwidth and the user has less incentive to visit the webpage of the original creator, When people get the image only by visiting Google image search, they have no reason to click to go to the URL or worrying about any copyright infringement.
After that I’ve noticed 60% drop in visitors, so what I did is I enabled hotlink protection in my sites and I have blocked Google images from viewing my photos and now when people click “view original” they are getting a photo with a warning message: “Hotlinking protected image, view and download this image ONLY at Photos8.org”
Since there’s no benefit anymore to having my images in Google image search anymore. they use my bandwidth, take my traffic, and more importantly, my photos without sending me visitors !!
I hope that my traffic will be back to normal but my visitors are kind of left displeased because they didn’t exactly got what they came for by Google image search, which means Google is serving false image results.
I know that many photographers and webmasters is not happy how Google hotlinks other people’s images and wastes server bandwidth and doesn’t even pay for it.
You can read the full discussion here on Google Product Forum.
You might also like:All stock photos is available with “Extended License – High Resolution Download” to be used for personal, educational, and commercial use.
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ME TOO !! this is outrageous, my traffic is half now !! i am blocking google images bot and i am hotlinking google, there is nothing useful for my site there, people get to see the images directly at google images without even visiting my site!!!!
I enabled hotlink protection and now when users click “view original” at Google image search they are redirected to my home page.
This seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face, doesn’t it? Is there not a way to display the photos that Google can see with a watermark, and then position the downloads (sans watermark, of course) within a shopping cart?
OKAY, so this is explains why my site traffic has dropped by about 60% in the last 10 days. Thanks a lot, Google !!!!!
I am an graphics designer and I have a some blogs and sites with lots of my designs. Lots of my traffic comes from Google image search. But now, after this new update the traffic on my sites is down more than 40%.
Now my site gone from 8,000 unique visitors to 1200 visitors in one day. I am completely screwed over.
I have blocked Google Images Bot from accessing my site in Robot.txt, and i have enabled hotlinking, but this is not helping, is there is anyway we can break the iframe and have the visitors visit the photo page, i have seen it done in some sites (see webmasterworld forum) when someone click for the original image they get redirected to the same page where the image is located.
I saw that you have did something in your site and you are redirecting visitors to the home page instead of getting the image at google image search.
No you can’t, because the new image search doesn’t use frames. Google directly incorporates your images in their markup. No FrameBuster will work against that – as it was possible until now.
I am sickened by what Google has done and can not wait for the first class action lawsuit to be filed against them for their “changes. I want to be in that class action suit. I think Google has gotten too big and I would love to see them knocked down a couple of pegs.
Sam … You are not alone, on my designs and art related website i have around 75% less traffic even and worldwide its the same for big and small websites, google is destroying my websites !!! everybody is suffering from this new google images search including big sites (flickr, deviantart, photobucket, and etc.)
Hotlinking is not helping either, even if you have your photos hotlink protected google image search will still show them (browse any protected image on google search and wait for few seconds “depend on your internet speed” the image will be loaded inside the black frame even before you click show original image.
I am working on a solution to stop google images from hotlinking and using my images and my bandwidth, as soon i find away i will post it.
I feel for all you guy’s getting screwed. I must be different from most image searchers on Google. I always visit the site where the image came from. That is how I got here! I really hope you guy’s figure out away to fix it.
This new image search is a serious problem for those of us artists and photographers, that make a living with the images on our sites, When google offer the full size image (view original image button) our readers have no reason to visit our sites.
What’s is the solution to prevent google images from hotlinking my photos, nothing is perfect for me, i have seen that fansshare (search in google images site:fansshare.com) they have avery nice way to prevent hotlinking from google images.
I have tried htaccess methods, watermarking the images with php and cgi methods, redirecting, but nothing is working for me, google is still hotlinking my images, i have finaly renamed my photos directory and i have blocked google images bot from accessing my photos.
The new design of Google Image Search is horrible to us webmasters and photographers, google has started hotlinking to the images files. simply google is taking you photographs, and delivering them in full resolution files directly to the searcher with only a link to your page. As a result, a visitor don’t need to go to the site anymore, because its veyr simple to get the image directly from Google itself.
None of these new WordPress is working good, (Google break dance OR Imaguard) google is still hotlinking and taking your bandwidth, and these plugins don’t cover all photos in the site and not redirecting to the post, and they are simply not working !!!
I am serving only thumbnails to google and i blocked google images from viewing my high resolution files, view original image will lead visitor from google to my home page, if the visitors want to see my images then they are very welcome to view it in my site ONLY.
Redirect working with ByREV WP-PICShield + Caching Support, Pass-Through Images Reques, Anti-IFRAME Protection, Custom image transprency, Custom PNG watermark. HostName url over images and/or in QR-BarCode !!!
Redirect direct-link to: attachment, single/gallery, or home, Protection against unauthorized requests, Avoid memory errors for big files, Allow Online Translators, Allow share button for socials sites:Facebook, Pinterest, Thumblr, Twitter, Google Plus, Allow WordPress via RPC and Twitter via OAuth, Manual Clear Cache script avoid php limit execution
Allow remote ip list +++ CDN Tools, and more …
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/byrev-wp-picshield-hotlink-defence/
Turn the watermark into a great ad for your site with your URL and a message inviting people to visit to see that image and many more.
This script works on static (non WordPress) sites:
http://www.scriptsocket.com/imagehotlinkingcode.html