Bloggers Exploit Google Image Search

Ken's Blog

My daughter has been using Site Build It! to grow her Web site about the Caribbean island of Anguilla for four years. Now 18, she has averaged only 1-2 hours per week on Anguilla-Beaches.com.

She is found for over 12,000 keywords related to Anguilla and has one of the "Big 4" sites about Anguilla. The site receives thousands of visitors per day and has the highest Alexa traffic ranking of any Anguilla-related site.

Besides traffic from "text search," she also has many first-page SERPs for Google Image search. So she generates a ton of image search traffic, including searches for celebrities who visit the island.

But recently she had the misfortune for Google's image search for Jay-Z to put her site at Page 1, #1. Why "misfortune"?...

Well, the first page result was doing just fine when Jay-Z was lower down on the page. And when she hit #1...

That search result alone jumped her traffic to over 1,000 visitors per day. It seems celebrities generate some interest! ;-)

But now take a look at a screenshot of that search. It may have changed by the time you read this (click on the image to see -- a new window will open so you can compare)...

Now here's the really interesting part. Clicking on that image used to lead to this page on anguilla-beaches.com for Jay-Z. Today, it leads to this blog (you can click to see the page, if the owner leaves it up of course)...

Now here's where it gets even more interesting. Tomorrow, it will lead to another blog. Yes...

The blog that sources the photo from anguilla-beaches.com changes at least every second or third day. So each blog steals from the previous one, footballing the original photo all over the Web.

You'll see this for other celebrities, too. Beyonce (Jay-Z's main squeeze, it would seem!) is being bounced around, too.

I know this can be defended against. And yes, my daughter could change the image to read "Visit Anguilla-Beaches.com For More On Jay-Z" and rename the original image on her own site. And heck, her site is not even about Jay-Z or Beyonce in any event...

But if Google is giving image search results, shouldn't it link to the page from the site that has the same domain from which the image originated? Just an interesting "break in the force." :-)

All the best,