-
Posts
-
Hi!
I’ve been noticing that one of my images has been having regular visits, all coming from India without a referring link.
My guess is that the image is hotlinked somewhere and that user visiting that page triggers the view of my image.
My question is: is this good or bad?
On one side, we do have the image watermarked where our domain is clearly legible, so nothing more can be done with the image and people do see our web address. And it drives traffic to our site (if that is relevant in this way), and it means that there’s another link to our site somewhere. I don’t know if these type of connections are considered by Google but if they are that can’t be bad, I guess.
On the other hand, someone is using our image without our consent or payment…
I’m in doubt on what we should do although I’m leaning to block the hotlinking to our images. After all someone is using the image without payment. But if they wouldn’t be using it, they would be doing it with any other photo and our address would not be seen and it would mean one less link to our site.
Any thoughts?
I dare say that hotlinking is the main idea of Symbiostock. It allows showing images from network sites. Also my global search uses hotlinks to display thumbnails and hover previews.
Maybe we should include a section in our licence or site conditions that hotlinking (outside the system) is not permitted and will be counted as a use for which a licence fee plus unauthorised use fee is payable ?
http://kerioakimaging.com - trying to reopen
http://nail-art-at.kerioak.com - Art and Nail Art@ajt wrote:
I dare say that hotlinking is the main idea of Symbiostock. It allows showing images from network sites. Also my global search uses hotlinks to display thumbnails and hover previews.
I think we are talking about different things. In the case of Symbiostock the linking between sites works to promote us to the eyes of the search engines and the linking to the images of the several sites are the results of a temporary search.
In this case I mentioned, something different happens. Someone grabbed our image address, and included our photo it in their sites to illustrate an article or something else like an advertising page.
To my eyes this is not different than someone grabbing an image from Google and using it, with the difference that in this case they are using our hosting bandwidth to show the image since from their part they only have a link. It’s our host service that gives the bandwidth to present the image. Some people even consider this theft.
@christine wrote:
Maybe we should include a section in our licence or site conditions that hotlinking (outside the system) is not permitted and will be counted as a use for which a licence fee plus unauthorised use fee is payable ?
Maybe we can include such a clause, but that will mean very little since I do not believe that people doing it cares to read the license. It may protect us if you want to send an invoice, but who will do it? Especially if you are a continent apart from the infringer? Not even Getty worries to actually chase an infringer, as I personally know, unless we’re talking BIG bucks…
I think the only way to prevent this would be to install a plugin to prevent hotlinking or include the option in the Symbiostock plugin.
Still, my doubt is if this can in any way benefit us since they are links to our site (considering that Google sees them like it), and if the eventual benefits to our web presence will overcome the abuse. Something like a distorted advertising form…
@lusoimages wrote:
I think we are talking about different things. In the case of Symbiostock the linking between sites works to promote us to the eyes of the search engines and the linking to the images of the several sites are the results of a temporary search.
In this case I mentioned, something different happens. Someone grabbed our image address, and included our photo it in their sites to illustrate an article or something else like an advertising page.
.Of course I know, that they are different cases, but I mean that if you simply disable hotlinking, ALL sites are excluded, “bad” and “good”.
To enable Symbiostock networking you should then edit your htaccess file (or use plugin/cpanel functions, if you have one) and allow hotlinking for sites that have your site in network. And every time after receiving email with “….. has added you to their site”, you should add this new site to the list and so on. You also should include all search engines in the list. Possible, but too much absorbing for me 🙂
And still someone can grab your thumbnail or preview and upload it somewhere.There doesn’t seem to be an immediate solution to this so how about disabling that image and re-uploading it, perhaps with a slightly different title? Would that do it?
@ajt wrote:
Of course I know, that they are different cases, but I mean that if you simply disable hotlinking, ALL sites are excluded, “bad” and “good”.
To enable Symbiostock networking you should then edit your htaccess file (or use plugin/cpanel functions, if you have one) and allow hotlinking for sites that have your site in network. And every time after receiving email with “….. has added you to their site”, you should add this new site to the list and so on. You also should include all search engines in the list. Possible, but too much absorbing for me 🙂
And still someone can grab your thumbnail or preview and upload it somewhere.Ok, I understand what you mean. Too much trouble then.
Considering the watermark we use , we’d be better considering it as “advertising“…
@stockcube wrote:
There doesn’t seem to be an immediate solution to this so how about disabling that image and re-uploading it, perhaps with a slightly different title? Would that do it?
Yes, but the indexing made by the search engines so far for the image could be lost. So, we’ll leave it as it is. Eventually, if we can detect the site using it we may take an action, even if it’s just a DMCA note.
I wouldn’t mind hotlinking. I would assume it’s good for SEO and marketing.
Not sure if you’re aware that you can prevent it by editing your .HTACCESS file as shown here.
Maybe on the line 5 in the .HTACCESS shown in the article you can point to an image written “You need to purchase a license for this image at mysyte.com” ;0)
Not sure if it will block also the images to be shown in the Google results, I didn’t try it yet.
The forum ‘Archives’ is closed to new topics and replies.