lucy24 - 12:56 pm on Nov 12, 2012 (gmt 0)

I put in a nifty rewrite in htaccess. Goes like this:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www\.example\.com/
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^-?$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !{a couple more hand-picked exceptions}/
RewriteRule (paintings/\w+/)blowups/large(\w+\.jpg) /$1thumbs/small$2 [L]

It's clean and simple because every full-size picture in the gallery section comes with a thumbnail whose name is exactly parallel. These are not my only images, but they're the biggest ones in filesize. Thumbs are exactly the same but only 5-10% the size, hardly bigger than the No Hotlinks image. So the picture is visible in search results-- but if they want to see the real thing they can jolly well come to the page.

So far Bing Image Search hasn't been nearly as plaguesome as That Other Search Engine. They don't behave any better or worse in themselves-- but they're not nearly as popular with people looking for hotlink fodder.

I do notice a big increase recently in Bing Preview. Or is this something they only just started doing, so I didn't notice it because it didn't exist? Will have to start paying attention.