Indirect Google Image hits?

January 14, 2007 2:19 PM

Why am I getting Google Image hits for an image that's not on my site?

It's not the situation like in this AskMe, I don't think. I get hits from Google Image for images ON OTHER SITES that I've linked to on my weblog.

Here's one that's suddenly started generating lots of hits:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.swim2000.com/images/tyr/2005_suits/DMSN-610.jpg&imgrefurl=http://myblogname.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_myblogname_archive.html&h=550&w=467&sz=70&hl=en&start=73&tbnid=q9SZIwZH_-TIVM:&tbnh=133&tbnw=113&prev=/images%253

(I removed the name of my actual blog; I hope there's not actually one out there called "myblogname".) It's a picture of some bathing suits, and the link on my site just says "bathing suit".

This has happened once before with a different image. It hasn't resulted in an expensive amount of traffic yet, but I would like to know why it's happening and if I can avoid it in the future.

posted by bink to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Because google image search shows the image in its context? When you say you've only "linked" to it, do you mean you've embedded (via an img tag) it on your site, but aren't hosting it, or that you simply have a text link (with an "a href" tag) to it?
posted by TonyRobots at 2:24 PM on January 14, 2007

Response by poster: Just a text link. Clicking it opens the image in a new window.
posted by bink at 2:31 PM on January 14, 2007

Best answer: If you linked directly to the image file, rather than linking to a containing page, then google.image links to your page as being the containing page.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 2:40 PM on January 14, 2007

Best answer: I'm guessing that Google found the image via the link on your page. Since you linked to the image directly, your page is then the only "context" it has for the image, so that's what it will show to its users.
posted by mbrubeck at 2:41 PM on January 14, 2007

Response by poster: I see. I guess I just have to be careful about my link text in the future.

Thanks.
posted by bink at 3:14 PM on January 14, 2007

Directly linking to an image file on someone else's server is generally considered poor netiquette. (A lot of servers, including my own, redirect such accesses to something nasty.) Google is trying to follow good netiquette by linking to a containing page.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 6:35 PM on January 14, 2007