Google Image Search Busts Frame Busters?

[levo]

Did Google just started busting frame busters? I've double checked my code, but it doesn't work for Google Images now.

[levo]

Framebuster code doesn't work for Google Images on iPad with iOS 5.1

[Dinkar]

does not work in chrome, next :D

I think we should ban google to show our images... the better solution is to show "This site is not authorized to show our content. Please visit http*//www*webmasterworld.com in your browser."

Let people know that google is doing something unauthorized.

[forense88]

every day i hate google more. if itīs difficult to get traffic....now much more. Google dont helps the small webmasters...

Websites like photobucket , stylebistro, zimbio, imageshack will die ? they get the most through google.

Google use our server to his business...

Sorry but i am from spain and my english is not good...

[enigma1]

the sandbox option should be working on other browsers if not now, soon. Also IE uses the security=restricted so the js won't execute and so I think it should be clear enough that's an old method.
[msdn.microsoft.com...]
So why the urgency now, the security attribute was introduced with IE6 so how many years we are talking about?

There were debates before about the buster-frame-buster-frame... using js, referrers and so forth and seems to me the argument is still on and people don't get it.

Google will only index what you allow it to index. So just display thumbs not the real images. If you don't want a page to be framed use the X-FRAME-OPTIONS, easier to deploy and manage than messing around with complex scripting. If you want to allow some domains to access resources but not others, js with ajax and cross-origin resource sharing is an option.

[Andem]

Alright. Google is now getting very sneaky. It seems that user security is not their only concern when framing other peoples content. I've carried out a few experiments and each time I find something that *might* work, it's squashed by Google.

My newest test was running all images through a PHP script which checks out the referrer. If the referrer is not on a list of sites which allowed to hotlink images, it will produce a different image which says something along the lines of "The web site displaying our content has not been authorized to do so. If you found us by way of Image Search, please click the link 'Website for this image' to view the content you are searching for".

Unfortunately, Google also runs some javascript to check whether it is the same image being served. Once the JS figures out the image is not correct, it will immediately replace the hotlinked image with their own saved thumbnail.

While Google has been very sneaking in their reasoning and implementation (this is *not* fair use), forcing Google to display their own thumbnail entice users to actually visit your site to view the full image.

***Edit: There is now a work around I've found. If the image has the same dimensions as the one they've indexed and are indeed hotlinking, the new image WILL display in place of the one being stolen.

[forense88]

I hope google die. Now there is a lot of webmaster dont know nothing about his websitesīs future. I know websites with thousand pictures....

[zeus]

if nothing changes simply block google and if they become friendly again it only takes a week or 2 to get fully indexed again. Also look at Bing Image they are getting better and they also presents your site, so promote Bing instead.

[ken_b]

Also look at Bing Image they are getting better

Yeah, sure, and they also add this little note ....

Displaying this page may force you to leave Bing Images. Opening the page in a new window will prevent this. Open in a new window | Open here

Their pal Yahoo! is even worse...

Loading the page might take you away from Yahoo! Image Search (Not recommended). Continue Anyway

Note the NOT RECOMMENDED thing, isn't that webmaster friendly!

Of the three, I think Googles approach is the least offensive. But I've now added my main image file to my disallow list in robots.txt.

I don't need or want the traffic that bad.

[Hope_Fowl]

If your server detects Googlebot, feed Googlebot low-resolution images or watermarked images.

Or change the site's style so the index-type pages have such low-res images, and you have to click someplace to reach high-resolution images (and block Googlebot from the high-res pages).

[forense88]

We have to close our images to google . maybe so it change !

[matrix_jan]

If your server detects Googlebot, feed Googlebot low-resolution images or watermarked images.

Another solution could be feeding low-res, or watermarked image to google image preview.

Well at least we didn't get PENALIZED for frame busting. Things just got more complicated. One of my competitors banned his images from being "google previewed", so when you click on the image it loads the cached one after failing to load the original one. It's a somewhat awkward solution for a 2M+ UV/mo website.

[dstiles]

There are some problems no matter how frame-busting is attempted.

1. Quite a few people turn off JS in their browsers. In Firefox+NoScript it is usually a default state. So no matter what JS frame-busing code you use, a LOT of people will not be redirected anyway.

2. If you can, feeding images via PHP or similar gives you a lot more control, over image hot-linkers as well as google, bing, yahoo etc. Sadly, this is not always possible.

3. Even if you block images in robots.txt, if you permit google preview then google WILL bypass this and load the images anyway. You have to also block google preview - and preferably no-archive pages as well (difficult to no-archive images).

The time is rapidly approaching when google must be banned from sites. And do not think robots.txt will be sufficient in banning them! It will take more than that, despite what they claim. The only real way is to block ALL of their IP ranges at the firewall.

If your site has been long pandalized or most of your traffic is not google-referred, cut the cord now!

[Andem]

The time is rapidly approaching when google must be banned from sites. And do not think robots.txt will be sufficient in banning them! It will take more than that, despite what they claim. The only real way is to block ALL of their IP ranges at the firewall.

You are completely correct. I closed the floodgates to Googlebot-image *and* Googlebot to pages that were mainly hosting images. Traffic dropped a lot, but after 3 months, my traffic from imgres looks like a roller coaster; a bit lower sometimes than previously, but still a lot more than ZERO, which is what robots.txt

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /dir/*
User-agent: Googlebot-image
Disallow: /dir/*.jpg

should mean.

[zeus]

ken_b - look buddy of couse it says that be cause they see on your page that the visitor will be redirected somewhere, be cause of your script. Try a bing image search with a site you know dont have that frame busters script on it and you will change your mind.

[freejung]

Your phrasing is ambiguous... if you want...

Just speaking for myself, what I really want is for Google to stop this image framing business entirely. It's definitely not fair use. Their argument is that it helps users, and it does -- users who want to take and use my images without visiting my site or reading my terms of use. My images are free (speech and beer). People are welcome to use them however they like. However, I want them to visit my site (some will click ads) and read my terms of use, which require a link as attribution. That's all. With the current implementation of Google Images, I get nothing at all out of the deal except used bandwidth. How is that fair? They should just stop.

Failing that, what I want is the situation as it was a few days ago. When someone clicked a thumbnail, they were sent to a framed version which executed my JS framebuster, and the visitor was redirected to my site. The images are right there at the top of the page, it's not like they are hard to find, so the user gets what they want immediately and I get a real site visit.

Failing either of those... I'm not sure I want to be listed in image search any more.

[zeus]

If they want to do something for the user, they should do so if a user clicks a thumb, they get directly to the page where that images is, maybe the user will then see more of interest. One should ask this google dude why they do this.

Another thing is there a way to show this frame buster to google but not to bing.

[phranque]

Once the JS figures out the image is not correct, it will immediately replace the hotlinked image with their own saved thumbnail.

i wonder if an X-Robots-Tag noarchive header served with the image would be respected in this case.

[Rosalind]

I think this makes watermarking more important, if you're not ready to cut the cord entirely. If people aren't going to come to your site to view the image, you have to at least bring your site name and copyright notice to them by putting it directly on the image.

[forense88]

Boys all is ok today...google has change his opinion....

[freejung]

You're right! Whohooo!

[zeus]

well all this time where we have talked about this I did not have the trouble on my sites

[HowYesNo]

G please no more experimenting with html5

I wish they return old g images frame, not the current one but old with small frame on top (i think it was 100px) and my whole site below, that were good days for us adsensers

[tangor]

I don't market or promote images... though all images on my site are germane and copyright. Years back I said no to the SEs and continue to do same, though the number of SEs has diminished. Frame busting, with the new g "sandbox" makes this even more difficult. Won't comment on the copyright theft or "how rude" since I block 'em all in the first place. Why?

That old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words... I want them to read my thousand words where that picture is displayed. Simple.

YMMV

[Andem]

This is *very* good news. I noticed on the weekend running Chromium that the frames were broken out of.. and now that I'm home again, with Chrome it is the same thing :)

I believe somebody at Google has read this thread. If people like me can't monetize content, then it isn't possible for us to create the content and thus scrapers have nothing new to scrape. Good on Google.

[Web_speed]

I think this makes watermarking more important, if you're not ready to cut the cord entirely. If people aren't going to come to your site to view the image, you have to at least bring your site name and copyright notice to them by putting it directly on the image.

Google products feed (Google merchant/product search) reject watermarked images. I had a couple of feeds rejected due to watermarking my product images, the feeds were accepted back only after i removed the watermarks. The watermark was very small right in the middle of the image, can hardly be seen and simply notes the store name.

[DeeCee]

Personally I cut off Google image bots quite a while ago. Blocked all image directories to all search bots.

I often use graphics from licensed image packages I have purchased to enhance both site and illustrate blog entries. And they sure generated a lot of "traffic" from Google image search.

However, watching the behavior of the humans (ignoring the robots going only for the single image), they hardly ever seemed to behave like normal users did. It became very obvious to me, that traffic arriving from images "stolen" by Googlebot was almost 100% of no value. Such traffic was always from people that merely wanted to take the original image, and nothing else. Plus, the keywords searched on matches the image, and not the article. They obviously arrived for the sole purpose of a "right-click" to save images. Most people unfortunately do not seem to think about (or care) that they are taking copyrighted stuff.

Personally, I would rather have less (but real) traffic based on keyword search from article text, than have to support a large amount of "funny" traffic that merely want to steal what should not be stolen to begin with. Plus, preventing the Imagebots also stops all the load from Google/Bing loading away everything.

[matrix_jan]

Looks like the frame busting is now working again, at least with Chrome.

[forense88]

other time the same... i dont know why google is playing with his business...

[dhaliwal]

yes, they have turned it back on.

[Zippo]

do they blocked it again? on chrome don't works