Google Image - Big changes today?

[zeus]

I see some big dropes from google image on different sites, there must have been a big change today, any other seeing something.

[skipfactor]

Today's the first time I've noticed images at the top of the serps. Perhaps they're rolling that out now with Van Gogh's birthday.

[zeus]

I have seen that for a few days now, but I dont like it, I think it harms the layout, but the image search is totaly out of control/changes.

[willybfriendly]

Skipfactor, these have been showing for a couple of months

[webmasterworld.com...]

Only seems to be on selected search terms. No pattern that I can make out. DO some searches on animals, both plural and singular, and by breed. some pop up with pictures, some don't.

From an SEO perspective, the pics tend to push one or two results below the fold, and give a benefit to those that can get a pic at the top of the page. It's like a free #1 listing.

WBF

[skipfactor]

>>Skipfactor, these have been showing for a couple of months

Yea, I know, but this is the first time I have personally "noticed" it. Though admittingly, I haven't been running very many queries lately.

[webjefe]

From an SEO perspective, the pics tend to push one or two results below the fold, and give a benefit to those that can get a pic at the top of the page. It's like a free #1 listing.

Has anyone received GOOD traffic from their images? My experience has been that my image URLs get put on other websites and waste my bandwidth.

[ken_b]

Has anyone received GOOD traffic from their images? My experience has been that my image URLs get put on other websites and waste my bandwidth.

It's a two edged sword. Images get posted elsewhere draining your bandwidth.

Images posted elsewhere can send a fair amount of type-in traffic to your site if you label them with your site name/url.

[zeus]

I have a site that got almost only hits from the google image SE for a long time, but today not 1 hit from google image, dont ask me how to get good ranking for that I got no Idea, everything els I know about but google image and new MSN.

[skipfactor]

No more Van Gogh paintings in the serps anymore here. Still the logo though.

[zeus]

Ohh Im sorry, I think I know what happend to my serps, it looks like all those hits I have lost where pure hotlinking and now it is updated in the google image SE. The wierd thing is just that on 1 site I just added the .htacccess and the other its a few weeks ago, but the change first happen yesterday, so I think google image maybe have droped alot of those hotlinking image sites.

one of the sites have lost 3000 unique visits and that was just pure hotlinking.

Hmm now I looked at it again and now Im not sure if it is just hotlinking, I have never been that interested in the google image SE