stop Google Images fr. searching site's image folders

how to get google images to search for images within my blog--but not my im

[richards1052]

I use images in my blog & store them on my server in image folders. I've noticed that many, if not most visitors to my site who come via Google Images searches are finding the images within the image folders & not within the blog posts themselves. This defeats my purpose since I want people to read my posts & not come only to see a single image.

Is there any disadvantage in telling Google Images NOT to search the image folders? Will it make it any more likely GI will find the photos within the posts & offer those links in the Images search?

How would I tell GI to stop crawling the image folders--through a robots.txt msg. or some other means?

[stapel]

If you disallow your images folder, you should be okay. Yes, the Google-image-bot may see a link in a blog entry to an image, but since the source of that image is barred, it shouldn't follow the link.

At least, that's how it's worked on my static pages. I'm guessing that it should work similarly on your blog pages.

Eliz.

[richards1052]

Thanks Stapel.

I guess I didn't make myself clear. I want people to find my images, but I want Google Images to display them in the context of the posts they appear in. Right now, the images are displaying alone w/o the posts.

[Ouroboros]

If I understand you correctly, you don't have an index.html file in this images directory, and thus your webserver is displaying a list of your files when people open your images directory. If that's the case, just create an index.html file (with the content that you want people to see) and put it into your images directory. Viola - no more browsing of your image folder.

Another option is to research .htaccess usage. I suggest creating an .htaccess file in your images directory which will redirect any inappropriate requests to another page on your site of your choice.