This referrer path really annoying me. Anyone else with this problem?

images.google.com.mx/imgres?imgurl=http://www

[tvldeals]

I am somewhat concerned about the referrer/link that seems to bring hits to my site, more than ANY other. The path is as follows: images.google.com.mx/imgres?imgurl=http://www___________
This really urks me because I beleive these are hits those that come from people who are searching for images to use on their OWN website. Is there a code I can put in place to make it so that the person cannot copy an image? Still my real concern is wondering why most of my hits from Google are for my IMAGES? Gosh talk about annoying.....
I have a travel site with some very nice images but its almost out of hand. 70% of my hits are of this type...

[Rosalind]

I've noticed a slight increase in hits from Google images, often for images that I wouldn't consider worth stealing. It is possible to forbid Google from using your pictures on its image search, but consider if you would really want to. It's hard to know what people are thinking when they use Image search.

It's a fair bet that not everyone who uses it is a webmaster, as the link is there on the Google homepage where millions will see it. I often use it for educational reasons, and I'm sure a lot of other parents do. So I'll be looking for sites with good pictures first, but if the text is also useful and easily understood then all the better. Do you really want to turn this kind of surfer away?

The question is, how typical is this, and are image searchers in general the kind of people you want on your website? The only way to answer that is to have two comparable sites and ban image search bots on one of them to see what happens.

[encyclo]

You can simply block your images from being indexed by Google images - it won't affect your normal Google listing.

From: [google.com...]

Add the following to your robots.txt:

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

[Liane]

There is only one way around this that I've been able to figure out and that is to use a code to name your images rather than real names like: et04.JPG instead of Eiffel-Tower-2004.JPG

If the robot can't figure out what the image is, then it won't be found in any "meaningful" Google image searches. The problem with using a code of some sort is that it won't help your search engine rankings any.

Watermarks work as well, but are a lot of work and my beef is that it really doesn't help the image at all.

I don't know ... I am really sick of people stealing my stuff too. I'm in the same industry as yours! Seems its full of thieves and schemers looking for cheap and easy ways to do what may have taken you years to accomplish. :(

[Conard]

Another way to stop the display of images in Google or any where else is the use of a .htaccess file. I replace the requested image with a 1x1 transparent image.

[Liane]

Conrad ... how do you mage that? Can you expound on what happens?

[Conard]

I simply use a .htaccess file in the image folder that looks like this:
__________________________________
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}!^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}!^htt(p¦ps)://(www\.)?mydomain.com.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}!^http://(www\.)?froogle.google.com//.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}!^http://216\.239.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}!^http://64\.233.*$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER}!^http://66\.102.11.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .(gif¦jpg)$ [mydomain.com...] [R,L]
______________________________________________
All of the ¦ characters need to be replaced by the pipe or capitol \.

[Liane]

Many thanks Conrad!