Hot linker galleries ranking higher than "me" (Image search)

[Peter_S]

Hi,

There is something I do not understand :

- I host an image (that I created) at my site. (e.g : mysite/images/photo1.jpg )
- I display this image at a page of my site to illustrate an article on the same subject. (e.g : mysite/article-about-something.html )
- another site hotlink my image at a page which contains only images, no text. (e.g : othersite/random-page.html ), with the same alt tag as mine. The page being just a collection of images, all hot linked, and certainly produced automatically. You certainly know what I am talking about.
- Google knows both pages.
- Running an image search at Google returns the "othersite" and shows "mysite", only in the similar images.

So my question is why ?

I don't understand how the "context" surrounding the image of the hot linker gallery can be "better" than mine.

Also, I think that when an image is hosted at the same domain as a page, it should come first, before hot linker. Of-course if the context of the page of the hot linker is more valuable , this can be different, but when it's just random galleries, made of images found online, I don't understand.

I mind this because, Google image search still represents a good share of my traffic, and it could be much better if I was being credited for "my" images, before hot linkers, who just ran a bot to find images.

[NickMNS]

I speculate that the hot linker's page has more links pointing to it.

[keyplyr]

Consider blocking server farms and user agents known to be scrapers:
User Agent Forum [webmasterworld.com]

Also you may want to block those domains from hot-linking:
Code Forum [webmasterworld.com]

[lucy24]

I was wondering about the hotlinking aspect. Sure, you can block hotlinks so that if a human views the offending page, they don't see your images. (Now and then, just to make sure things are still working, I pick some offender out of logs, have a look and am gratified to see my “No Hotlinks” image.) But that has no effect on the issue with search engines thinking an image "belongs" to the said hotlinker.

I agree with OP. If an image is called by more than one page on more than one site, shouldn't it be treated as "belonging" to the site that the image itself lives on? It can't possibly be difficult for a search engine with vast computing power to keep track.

[keyplyr]

Anti-hotlinking code addresses the incentive to hot-link. Stop that, there's no reason for the remote site to do it.

But you're correct. Blocking hot-liking in itself does not completely deal with the overall issue. That's where the scraper blocking comes in.

Even with all the usual defenses, there's the occasional breach where manual tactics are needed.

[not2easy]

Unfortunately a site that serves up lots of images, whether they belong there or not is quite likely to rank for an image search over an article that has one of the same images as the image site. Now, if you search for the topic/subject/keyword(s) of your page where they're hotlinking from and they rank higher then it is much more of a concern. Preventing hotlinking is pretty easy to do, it makes sense to prevent hotlinking as a general practice.

[RedBar]

but when it's just random galleries, made of images found online, I don't understand.

The business model and practice of Pinterest and Houzz!

Their pages can outrank anyone even when they have utter garbage and misinformation.

Oh ... you are aware that these two are Google's neighbours?

I see my original images all over the Net mostly on Blogger sites, oh ... You are aware that Google owns Blogger?

Just saying ...

[Peter_S]

@NickMNS: sure, I bet they have a constellation of automatically generated sites, involved in a huge linking network.

@keyplyr: thank you. I did this already, but it didn't really change anything. It certainly blocks some scrapers, but considering this is a "business model", I would think they are hiding their bots more and more professionally.

As to blocking hot linking, this is not changing the problem, because it won't block Googlebot from indexing my image, from their site. And since it's automatically generated content, I doubt they mind that some of the images be missing at their page.

I wish that Google would allow to restrict the indexing of images to a given domain. Or/and that Googlebot image would provide a referrer URL so that we can inform Googlebot that such image, found at such other site, is not allowed.
Or to have an option at the Google Search Console to allow image indexing only at your domain. Like they do for Adsense where you can specify on which domain your ad code can be used.

@RedBar: I understood your point of views :) . Now, as for pinterest, so far I didn't see them showing ahead of me. Also, when they take an image from my site, they provided a link to the original page, and this link shows at the Google Search Console in the incoming links. So I guess it credits me for a little something.

Thank you all for your replies

[dipper]

you could always treat it as a marketing opportunity - if they are hotlinking to your images then why not filter requests for hotlinked images, and then show a banner image promoting your website instead .. this way your banner, and website, and URL will be showing on their website .. ;)

Apache htaccess:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\.)?example\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !google\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !search\?q=cache [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !msn\. [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !yahoo\. [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png|jpg)$ /images/banner_for_my_website.jpg [L]

nginx:
[nodotcom.org ]

hope it helps!

[Peter_S]

@dipper, thank you for your suggestion. I am already doing something similar, when an image is hot linked , I display a mosaic version of the image, with the URL of my domain's root. But that is pointless. Because people are not going to type my domain in their address bar. They will just look at the other images from the hot linking gallery. But yes, it's better than nothing.

(I am not sure people ever really type anything in the address bar nowadays, we just "click" :) )

[dipper]

people might or might not, but search engines like Google can and do read text in images .. ;)

[Peter_S]

Yes, but Googlebot will not see the image with the "text" . Since Googlebot will not set a referrer, it will get the "normal" image. It could be great if we can set it the header of the image, the page to which the image belongs. A bit like a variant of the canonical url parameter (which can be set in the server header).