In yet another 'bite the hand that feeds us' step, the new Google Image search actively encourages people to view full size images without having to visit the page where Google found the image!
Thanks a lot Google!
Further discussion on the subject here :-
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-images-protest-16283.html
At this rate it will not be long before visiting any site other than Google will be totally unnecessary...
Sorry Google but you motto about not being evil is just plain ludicrous now.
Here's a screen shot of what the new image search looks like with one of my photos after I have clicked on it :-
Why would anyone click on the 'visit page' button?
Update -
It look like fanshare.com have worked out how to redirect people
clicking on the link for the hi-res image to the page it originally came
from.
Try
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:fansshare.com
Then click on images to see what I mean..
If someone can tell me how to do this for my own site it would be a very good start.
I know there is a .htaccess modification which will redirect image traffic to the home page. e.g. :-
http://galleryproject.org/node/110849
But that's really not ideal.i.e. If someone is looking at a sheep image, I want them to come through to the page with that image on it with links to other sheep images (and AdSense ads).
Also - one silver lining in this cloud is that a frame busting javascript will no longer be necessary, and if image search traffic can be redirected to the appropriate page, then data from Google analytics will start to make sense again (currently most traffic to photos-for-you.com is labelled 'direct' because of the frame buster).
By the way, it looks like Bing image search does pretty much the same thing these days...
Once I work out how to redirect Google image search traffic (viewing a hi-res image directly) to the appropriate page, I'll update this post. So stay tuned!
Another Update - Here is a link to a petition to sign if you feel Google are being unfair :-
https://www.change.org/en-IN/petitions/google-stop-hotlinking-copyrighted-images-of-web-publishers
Here are a few more relevant links :-
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2026989/google-cuts-copyright-deal-with-french-publishers.html
http://www.onthewingphotography.com/wings/2013/02/04/is-googles-new-image-search-violating-their-own-policies-the-law/
http://www.onthewingphotography.com/wings/2013/02/01/google-has-become-the-biggest-image-scraper-of-the-millennium/
Another Update - for self hosted Wordpress users - here is a plugin / .htaccess mod which seems to work for others (but not me unfortunately - I am assuming because I am using the YAPB plugin) :-
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-break-dance/
Another Update (14th February 2013) - here is another plugin for Wordpress which doesn't involve altering .htaccess (if you don't know that .htacccess is then you probably should not be altering it). :-
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/imaguard/
I got it working first time on my site. I've not been able to get it to redirect to the original post, but it is doing the next best thing by displaying the image in a new single post to which you can add AdSense code etc.
To have a look at what this looks like - click on the following link :-
http://photos-for-you.com/show-image/?img=/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Old-Castleward-From-Portaferry.jpg
I've still a few wee tweaks to make, but I'm 95% happy with this, and a great big thank you goes out to
http://imaguard.com/. Thanks!
Update - 17th February 2013 -
Here's a look at the traffic to photos-for-you.com before and after activating imaguard :-
The first 3 full days that the plugin was activated, the 'show-image' page (which is displayed when someone clicks on the 'view full size image' button in Google Image Search) accounted for
40% of all page views on photos-for-you.com. So this proves (for my site anyway) that the Google image search change decreased page views by approximately 40%, and shows that the nonsense from Google about people have an extra button to click on to bring them to your site would have a positive effect was just that, nonsense.
Update - 22nd Feb 2013.
Here's an updated look at traffic from within Google AdSense (dates indicated are not 100% precise) :-
Make Money From Photos by
Jordan McClements is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.