My images are hijacked in Google Image Search

[Cromagnon]

Hi all,

My pictures are being hijacket in Google images, and I do not know what to do. Maybe you have some suggestions?

This is my problem:

1. My picture is nr. 1 in google images on a great keyword. Under the picture my URL (page A)is displayed correctly.

2. But when pressing the image, visitor end up on an affiliate-page (page C) that is NOT EVEN linking or displaying my image.

I turned on me "live http header"-plugin in Firefox and it seems like when people click the image, they gets to a page B wich is actually linking to my image on page A. On this page B they are now getting redirected to page C. (the bad affiliatepage that is not even displaying my picture)

It is actually possible to see page B if you paste the URL directly into browser, but if you come from google images you will be redirected from B to C automatically.

This is really annoying.

My page A with the image is a PR3 frontpage and it is actually stronger than page B (that holds my image) wich i a PR0 subpage.

How can I get back my image and get the traffic from it?!

[tedster]

It sounds like your server may be hacked, so that visitors from Google Search get redirected but no others. Have you read this thread?

Hack Redirect Analysis from Google's John Mueller - scary stuff [webmasterworld.com]

If it happens repeatedly for you, then the "first click only" part of that hack would not be in place. But I strongly suspect some kind of cloaked hacking on your server.

There is a chance that, because of the hotlinking, Google has their wires crossed. But I'd suggest you give your own files a very close inspection first.

[Cromagnon]

I am not a script-expert myself, but does it not look like the hijacker just manage to get his pageB into google images buy linking to my image, and THEN redirect his own(?)PageB to PageC?

Is is some of the http-header:

< code removed - too much explicit information >

[edited by: tedster at 8:57 pm (utc) on Feb. 22, 2009]

[tedster]

You may be right - Google Image Search has historically had problems identifying the original source of hotlinked images. If that's what is going on, then it is a Google problem that only they can fix. So you should probably take it up directly with them, since we don't discuss specifics here.

See the Google Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com] for ways you can get the information to Google.

[zeus]

Cromagnon - your Problem IS the hotlinking the site that is Hotlinking your site just happen to have a redirect on there site. The dumb thing is google think thats your page also but only in the Google image search, so if they have bad text on there page, soon you will only see your images with out moderated filter on