Stop Google From Showing Your Images

This is probably one of the things you’d never thought you’d hear me say, but… Sometimes it’s necessary to stop Google from showing the images on your website.

What I mean by this is, you might need to insert a little code to stop the Google robots from showing your full sized images if…You’ve got people continually coming and stealing all of the pictures on your site. (Or, you suspect this is happening!)

You see, I’ve got a little old website that up until recently hasn’t received much attention. It’s been getting a few Adsense clicks here and there, from less than 100 pageviews daily traffic.

Well, suddenly it started getting a ton of traffic, but even so only received the same amount of Adsense click throughs. I checked the traffic stats to see where all this worthless traffic was coming from. Well, lo and behold it’s coming from my old pally Google images.

I don’t pretend to know for one second how you feel about Google images traffic, but I myself have a sinking suspicion that all the new traffic coming to my website from Google images really wants to do more than just look. I would go a step further and say they are actually in the mood to take.

Unfortunately, I’m not too happy with my images up for grabs at the Google image buffet. So I did a little searching and came up with this code to stop Google images from pointing directly to my full sized images.

Instead when you add this piece of code to the header of your websites html code it redirects from the Google image viewer to your website.

Not only can I now hopefully get more click throughs, I can make it a little harder for the picture thieves.

Add the html code snippet above to your websites header to redirect Google image traffic from a screen displaying your full sized pictures to your website. Remember to use your own judgment when using code like this. Google is an unpredictable beast and no one can say with certainty what might upset them.

Let me know if you’ve also run into this picture problem and what you’ve done to remedy the stolen images problems on your site.

Posted in Website Tools