I recently found a picture on my site that is in google images. It seems that many forums are linking to the picture, not an actual link to the website. Everytime i go to check my latest 300 visitors, pretty much all that shows up is all these forums that are linking to the picture. Is this bad? I don't think i'm getting any visitors from this, they are hotlinking to the picture. Is there something i should do?
Watch your bandwidth. If you're getting hotlinked from forums, there really isn't any benefit as they're just eating your resources. I just went through this and used a .htaccess file to block the individual sites that were causing the issue. PM me if you need the code to block them. Ian
i came up with something better i think. i added Visit BlueTomorrow.com for more information about the Bluetooth PS3 Controller, around the picture so i at least get some advertisment for my website. Good idea? This is what they see now: http://www.gamespot.com/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=23886556&page=1 You may have to scroll down a little to see the picture
That'd be a great way to advertise. If an image is hotlinked, put your logo on it to get the advertisement. Otherwise, if its displayed on the same domain, don't put the logo. Is that possible at all to do - on the fly?
what do you mean if its displayed on the same domain? I just did it in Paint (no graphic program). Did u take a look at what i did?
Yes I did see that. I was just wondering if it is possible to expand it... If your domain is xyz.com and you display an image, then no logo is shown (such as what you did). But if someone from abc.com decides to hotlink your image, then the logo shows up on there (thru a clever server switch or through automatic image branding). For my joke site, I have some sites hotlinking images from me already, and its killing my bandwidth use, so I'm looking for a solution that would let people do it, but I'd like to get a little something out of it too.
Great way to advertise in return for someone using your bandwidth! I'll have to try it next time it happens to me... I would make a copy of the original image and give it a new name on my site, then leave the original named image with the ad copy to be downloaded by the site that the posting was on.
the logo might be a good way to do it. I would have to wait till i got home to actually do something like that. It was just annoying seeing countless number of forums who were linking to the image. Maybe this will pick up traffic to my site.
So you're saying have the original photo (different file name) on my website and have the new one just sit on the server for people who are already hot linking to it to download? Good idea!!!
if you have cPanel, there is a hotlink protection option. You can even redirect to any picture that you want to serve instead. ie: your logo.
Exactly, that way the image remains the way you wanted it on your own site, but the one that is hotlinked can have your ad copy showing.
i have unmetered bandwidth so i dont' think i have to worry too much about bandwidth so telling them where to go to get more information could work. Is there a way to measure if anyone actually comes to my site because of the ad on the picture?
If you created a new page specifically for this and put that URL in the image then if someone went there, you would know from your logs that they came from the hotlinked image. This would not be 100% accurate of course, as someone could just go to your main homepage URL instead of typing in the whole specific page that you want them to go to but it could give you some idea.
I had this problem too. Got very annoying so I moved all of my images to a new image serving domain and put the hotlink protection on that domain, then called all the images from that new image domain and allowed only my site to show the images with hotlink protection and anyone that tries to steal my bandwidth gets a huge 700x700 ad saying to type in my domain lol.
I kind of what to encourage hotlinking, because they do count as links and will bring spiders to you. For that reason, I do like them.
I use something like the code below, it ensures that pictures can still be found in image searches (90% of my traffic is from google image search), but it stops people hotlinking from forums. The site already pulls 140GB of traffic/month, wouldn't want to think about how much it would be if I allowed people to hotlink. The hotlink image shows the url to the site, and it gets a lot of direct requests which I attribute to that. Yup there are some duplicates in it but it works RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$ RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?zindy.zone.dk(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?google(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(images\.)?google(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?altavista(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(images\.)yahoo(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.*search\.)yahoo(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.*)drawsketch.about.com(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.*)accoimages.com(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.*)fan-forum.de(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(search\.)?netscape(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.*)globalsearch.cz(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.*search\.)wanadoo(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.*)a9.com(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?picsearch(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(search\.)virgilio(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(aolsearch\.)aol(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www.aolimages\.)aol(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(images\.)aol(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(image\.)yisou(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?excite(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(suche\.)?web.de(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(images\.)?devilfinder(/)?.*$ [NC] RewriteRule .*\.(jpg)$ http://zindy.zone.dk/hotlink.jpeg [R,NC] Code (markup):
Haha theirs nothing funnier than doing a switcherooni on a hotlinked image! I've done everything from an advert for my site to going hardcore with some gay porn! On a side note, how does it count as a backlink unless the image is a clickable link back to your site?