What the Flickr?

October 3, 2008 9:34 PM

I have a picture on Flickr that has suddenly been getting daily hits in the hundreds. I tracked it down via stats to this page.

So, what the heck? They are linking to a photo of mine, on every page load, but not displaying it? What's up with that?

Is s(he)

a) an incompetent webmaster, in which case I'm going to watch my hit counts inflate and laugh?

b) getting some kind of nefarious advantage by linking to my picture for some kind of SEO-spammy reason, in which case I'm going to resent being used, and try to do something about it.

c) some third reason I can't fathom, but you might?

posted by pjern to computers & internet (7 comments total)

I cleared the FireFox cache, then loaded that page, then looked at the cache listing. Your picture wasn't in it, which means I didn't load it for visiting that page.
posted by Class Goat at 9:43 PM on October 3

It looks like your blog buddy there was originally going to use your photo for #23, but changed his mind and used the indoor stadium shot instead and didn't know how to properly remove the call for your photo.

Since he also has links to photos on his hard drive (Hi, C:/Users/Nick!), I am casting a very confident vote for Door A: Incompetent.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:46 PM on October 3 [1 favorite]

Class Goat: If it isn't getting loaded, where are the hundreds of hits coming from?
posted by pjern at 9:49 PM on October 3

he tried to display the image, but messed up by referencing the page (viz., http://www.flickr.com/photos/pjern/2769125909/) rather than the image (viz., http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3250/2769125909_b65bf59438.jpg)

the hits you're seeing are the browser checking to see if http://www.flickr.com/photos/pjern/2769125909/ is an image.. which it isn't.

enjoy your chuckle :D
posted by aiko at 9:54 PM on October 3

I wonder if (s)he'll see a spike in hits from AskMe and fix it now....
posted by pjern at 2:02 AM on October 4

just to make your future encounters with hotlinkers easier: bighugelabs has a great photo stats page (click the links at the very bottom as well, you'll find backlinks this way). I am sure you are aware of your flickr photo stats already.
posted by krautland at 4:24 AM on October 4

Yes, I keep up with the Flickr DNA page there at bighugelabs. One of the reasons I was puzzled was because there was a disconnect between the number of hits/views shown there and on Flickr's stats pages.
posted by pjern at 5:07 AM on October 4