I can't believe that Yahoo! image search is stealing my images

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I noticed a Yahoo! IP address systematically loading images from my website this morning, directly without visiting the associated pages, and went over to Yahoo! to have a look. What I found was that my images do return in search like usual, first as thumbnails and when a thumbnail is clicked on the full version appears on Yahoo!

I have both image hotlink protection in place and so I was a little surprised when the Yahoo! page did not redirect back to my site AND did not display a blank page so I checked and sure enough - the image is stolen and on Yahoo in full.

The kicker is that to get to my site from that image you have to click on a link that says "continue anyway" (not my web address or anything intuitive) which is placed right beside this message...

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

WTH Yahoo!?!

[lucy24]

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

Pah, that's nothing. Have you seen the page facebook sends people to if they try to follow a link to a site that has had the gall to block facebookexternalhotlink?

I put Yahoo on my "ignore" list ages ago but am now seriously rethinking the action. (Different thread, different forum.) Between the Cache-- which goes "index page, favicon, index page, favicon" in regular progression with nary a robots.txt in sight, and Slurp-- which picks up complete pages, human-style, complete with the distinctively human trait of never bothering with robots.txt...

Uhm. What are these functions* supposed to be good for, again?


* Both from 98.136-139 range. Should I be grateful that, unlike certain other well-known robots, they don't go for the javascript?

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

The "loading" message occurs if you have a framebusting script in place. Yahoo attempts to load you page under your image but if it can't it breaks your script and gives the above message.

Still, A copy of all your images, in full size, is shown on Yahoo with no intention of sending you traffic. It seems Yahoo! has gone and done what Bing has been doing for some time, it's worth it to block both from your images now.