TWCL

[vaslittlecrow]

If you're like me, and have experienced a sudden or unexpected drop in traffic to your webcomics in the last two weeks (mine was about 30%), it might be Google and Bing's fault. Read the articles below to relish in the head explosion.

http://semandseo.blogspot.com/2012/12/bing-updates-modern-image-search-and.html
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-images-protest-16283.html
http://halfelf.org/2013/hotlinking-google/


If you want to stop Google and Bing from wasting your bandwidth, violating your intellectual property rights and bypassing your ads, while monkeying around with your visitor count, here is an easy fix:

Edit your robots.txt file in your public_html directory, and add this little bit of code:

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

User-agent: msnbot
Disallow: /*.jpg$
Disallow: /*.jpeg$
Disallow: /*.gif$
Disallow: /*.png$


The code I shared should remove your site from Google/Bing Image searches which seems like a stupid idea for a webcomic because of the traffic you may lose, until you realize that you aren't getting the traffic at all.

I just wanted to share.
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Visit Catnose Comics and Velvet Rasputin to see my comic art and graphic novels.

[smbhax.com]

Well, you could still get some, because the new Google Image results do have a button the user can click to see the original page.

But I'm not a fan of the new Google Image interface either. ;P
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[UncleRobot]

Hey, Vas.

Let me make sure I understand...

If I apply this code it will simply remove my site's images from Google image search moving forward? So I won't increase traffic to my site, I just wont have my site's images getting hotlinked by google?

Thanks.
Neil

[vaslittlecrow]

Correct.
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Visit Catnose Comics and Velvet Rasputin to see my comic art and graphic novels.

[SuitCase]

i too read all my webcomics in google image search
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Bittersweet Candy Bowl, a comic of love, drama and cats.
Updates 3 times a week!