I have analytics on the site tracking adsense clicks and those visitors do about as well as other sources. Some more stats: Referrer pages/visit google 15.43 images.google.com 11.55 images.google.de 10.49 images.google.co.uk 12.71 images.google.ca 16.21 images.google.fr 12.06 images.google.pl 10.75 images.google.nl 15.17 images.google.com.au 15.08 etc.. I only allow hotlinking from image search engines, so the situation is not like the livejournal example you describe.