11 replies to this topic

[Arcadiauk]

Has anyone else's store been swamped by people searching for
images in google?? We are getting a lot of referer's similar to this
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...ges/*******.jpg
(the stars denote the image name)

We have Visitor webstats and who's online installed on our store and
have noticed an increase in traffic to our site looking for certain images
within the last couple of weeks. We are getting traffic from all over the
world but particularly from Russia, France & Finland.

We have now added a couple of lines to our robots.txt file to disallow
our image folders hoping that this might take the problem away when
Google re-indexes.

We seem to have had one particular product that is forever being picked
by google images and now this item has become the most viewed item in
our admin panel.

I know some people would love a lot of traffic to their site but these visitors
only stay a few seconds and then leave.

So am I alone in this or are other people having the same problem???

Derek

[mark27uk3]

Hi Derek,

The same thing is happening to my store, Its a total pain in the butt! The latest vistor (from Turkey) added two items to the cart and then went.

Has adding lines to your robots.txt file helped the situation?

Thanks

Mark

[Arcadiauk]

The problem with Google images is that google takes a thumbnail of an image
from your site and uses it to create a link to your site. So even removing the
image or renaming it won't keep people away.

I think we not have helped ourselves by giving all our images logical names which
google seems to be able to split into logical words.

We have now created a new image with a new name and create a brand new
product too and removed the old one. Now if people come into the site they will
get re-directed to the product not found, but please browse our alternative
products page.

We won't know until Google re-indexes if the new robots.txt additions will work,
I suppose it could take months to die down.

Here is the line I added..

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /account.php
Disallow: /advanced_search.php
Disallow: /checkout_shipping.php
Disallow: /create_account.php
Disallow: /cookie_usage.php
Disallow: /login.php
Disallow: /password_forgotten.php
Disallow: /shopping_cart.php


I know it's a pain it the butt but I'm glad i'm not the only one having the same problem. I'm beginning to wonder if it has something to do with Google updating
it's software a month or so ago.



Derek

Edited by Arcadiauk, 04 April 2005, 12:20.

[Simplyeasier]

Arcadiauk, on Apr 4 2005, 12:39 PM, said:

I know some people would love a lot of traffic to their site but these visitors
only stay a few seconds and then leave.

Derek

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Every cloud has a silver lining

Why dont you

1) watermark your images with your web address or something

2) Prevent image hotlinking - so the only way they can use your images is by stealing the watermarked ones - free publicity if they use them

Charles

[Arcadiauk]

I don't think it's a case of the images are being stolen because most of
the images are standard stock images from manufacturers. The main
problem is the waste of bandwidth and the annoyance in our webstats.

Perhaps I will change my mind if we make a sale via this route, perhaps
then I will welcome these visitors with open arms.

Derek

[jon_l]

Instructions on stopping your images appearing on the Google website are here:

http://www.google.com/remove.html#images

Though if you don't want any of your images to appear, add the following to your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

They also have instructions on the above link explaining how to get the images removed asap, rather than on the next crawl.

It doesn't bother me too much at the moment though - you might get a sale from it one day. Though if it started affecting performance and bandwidth I'd change my mind!

Jon.

Edited by jon_l, 13 April 2005, 17:04.

[Arcadiauk]

I actually contacted Google yesterday with regard to removing the item from their
database and I received an email from them within 4 hours. By 11:30 last night
the item had been removed and the traffic trying to locate that item stopped
instantly. Great service from Google I think.

Derek

[boxtel]

Arcadiauk, on Apr 14 2005, 02:15 AM, said:

I actually contacted Google yesterday with regard to removing the item from their
database and I received an email from them within 4 hours. By 11:30 last night
the item had been removed and the traffic trying to locate that item stopped
instantly. Great service from Google I think.

Derek

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

better get YahooSeeker-1.0 in your robots.txt as well.

[mark27uk3]

Hi Guys,

The google imagebot will not go away at all, I have added these lines to my robot.txt file but they still persist.

Quote

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /admin
Disallow: /account.php
Disallow: /advanced_search.php
Disallow: /checkout_shipping.php
Disallow: /create_account.php
Disallow: /login.php
Disallow: /password_forgotten.php
Disallow: /popup_image.php
Disallow: /shopping_cart.php
Disallow: /cookie_usage.php
Disallow: /images

What else do I have to do to stop them!!

Thanks

Mark

[boxtel]

mark27uk3, on Apr 24 2005, 09:42 PM, said:

Hi Guys,

The google imagebot will not go away at all, I have added these lines to my robot.txt file but they still persist.
What else do I have to do to stop them!!

Thanks

Mark

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

use this :

User-agent: Googlebot-Image/1.0
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/

User-agent: YahooSeeker-1.0
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/

User-agent: psbot/0.1
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/

[mark27uk3]

Thanks Amanda, Whats psbot?

Mark

[boxtel]

mark27uk3, on Apr 24 2005, 09:56 PM, said:

Thanks Amanda, Whats psbot?

Mark

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

a new one which is also only targeting your images (all images). There is some info about them on the internet.