The itsy, bitsy, spider

By Todd Bertsch

Do you have a personal website on the internet?

Do you have images on your website? I know, dumb question, but for the sake of this article I had to ask it. Sure you do.

Have you ever used Google’s Image Search Tool (a search engine created by Google that only shows images in the search results)? Or, any other search engines’ image search tool? If not, you should, because it’s a very useful tool. Google started this trend, and now everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. As with anything, there’s the good and bad side to this new feature. I’ve encountered both views and thought it was worth writing about. I’ll explain below with real life examples. You can then form your own opinion; if you LIKE or DISLIKE this new tool on Google.

The GOOD doings of image search

• This is a great tool for designers. I use it to generate very quick ideas for imagery and concepts.

• It has been said amongst the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) world that by giving your image files descriptive keyword names that you’re targeting, that could help them get spidered, and consequently add relevance to your website.
• You’ll get FREE clicks to your website and it may also help with branding.

Very cool right?

Well, I thought so too, until recently I began to see a different side or disadvantage to this tool.

The bite of the spider Here’s my real life example of why I’m quickly becoming weary of image search.

I have a personal website (http://www.bertschdesign.com) where I showcase my recent work to promote myself and obtain new clients. I’ve recently started analyzing my web logs to review my traffic patterns and trends. To much of my surprise I’ve been getting some pretty decent amounts of traffic. Nothing huge, but it’s been enough to raise my eyebrows. I know for a fact that it’s not a result of marketing, because I don’t do any for this site. Only friends, family and colleagues probably have links to my site, with the exception of a few inbound links I’ve acquired over the past few years. What I learned, was that much of this new traffic was coming from Google Image searches, and it was all from countries other than the U.S. Each time they visited they were hitting every page that had images (samples of my work including logos, print samples, website samples, etc.) Now I’m not going to make any accusations here, but I do suspect that it’s strange that they are visiting my site, let alone viewing every one of my sample pages. This is not one incident. This happens every day. Click this link and you’ll see how I got spidered. All the images on my entire site are easily downloadable, and yes, for those of you who are web savvy, getting images off a webpage is very easy. But this tool makes it even easier and more accessible than ever before to others who are not as savy. Are people from other countries stealing my work? Just getting ideas for concepts? I have no idea. But it does have me suspicious and wondering if I should block these images from being spidered.

Unwanted traffic

Another potential disadvantage to this tool is that you could be getting unwanted traffic (server calls to your web host), which effects your hosting contract (your bandwidth allotment). If you go over your bandwidth allotment that has been assigned to your site when you signed up with your host, you could be in danger of paying some large penalty fees. And your site could potentially go down or “offline” as a result. If you’re not familiar with your contract, you might want to check it out. For those of us with small sites, that utilize a cheap and/or FREE hosting service, this could be cause to worry.

The ever lasting topic of intellectual property

Sorry, I had to bring this up. I know myself I get tired of reading about this. Yes, it’s an issue. An issue we will always deal with. Just use your common sense and good moral beliefs. If you don’t own it or purchase a license for it, by all means don’t use it for commercial purposes. Even for personal usage may be a stretch.

Just as people in other countries may be “Borrowing” my images (I say this very lightly). There are plenty here in the U.S. that are “Borrowing” as well. The digital intellectual property just became a bigger problem with this image search tool.

Borrowing Images

I have a friend who is studying to be a teacher. She creates many power point presentations for her class presentations. Take a guess where she gets all of her images? She gets them from…Google Image Search. She tells me with excitement. “It’s so EASY! I just love it. All of these images at my fingertips”. True. Very True. But who owns these images? Are their copyright restrictions, I ask. Just because they are on the internet doesn’t make them fair game for everyone to use. I know this has the magnitude to be its own article, but it does tie in well with this image search tool issue that is growing rapidly.

Personal Pictures

Do you take digital photos? Do you post them on your personal site? Do you post them to a free photo center like “Fotki” or “Shutterfly”? If you do, please be aware that these photos could be getting indexed by the search engines as well.

Family Story

Consider the following situation. A friend of mine takes some pics of my family at a birthday party. She then posts them to a free online photo center or even her own personal family website. This friend, being very organized, names the photos appropriately. For example, “BertschFamily_birthday1.gif”, Well guess what? This photo directory could be getting indexed by Google. Example: Do a search for “Bertsch Family” and see what comes up. I bet these people have no idea there photos are available to millions. Pretty freaky? Yes, I think so. Be very careful what you and your friends and family members do with your personal photos. I really don’t want to see my families photos being brought up in search results. Do you want yours?

Education

I believe it’s all about education. Google and others must educate users on what they’re viewing or possibly downloading. Google does have a small paragraph which is linked off of their home page and it covers their butt. However I think it’s a rather weak attempt and needs to be more prominent on the actual Image Search Results Page. Here’s the link if you want to read it. It’s question #2.

So what will you do?

Design a site with NO images? Hope that no one steals your images? Or reap the rewards of FREE clicks to your site. It works. I’ve seen it in action. It’s a tough business decision. Just be careful.

If your images are out there, the itsy, bitsy spider will crawl. Just don’t get bitten!

This Google link explains how to remove your images from google image search, click here.

tb