Star One Smart Blog's

This is pretty good. A photoshopper at Freaking News found my old 'Friday Photo' spread of Al Gore's house, and loaded the driveway up with barrels of toxic waste. Kewl.

But, I checked the stats for the past couple days, and that page wasn't visited. Which means (1) he or she snagged it from a much earlier visit, or (2) some miscreant snagged the photo and re-posted it somewhere without telling me, or (most likely) (3) someone is hotlinking to that photo on my dime, using my Photobucket account. Hmmmph.

I caught a shatload of hotlinkers hotlink-posting my Sarah Palin photo fix, and fixed them. Akindele is still hotlinking the hotlink fix! That's gotta sting.

Maybe that hidden photoshopper will tell me where s/he acquired my picture of Al Gore's home. If my Photobucket account is being hotlinked, well, I'll take care of that. Heh.

But, I don't mind the usage of the photo. I'm gonna give the guy a very high rating.. )

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UPDATE I just heard from the Freaking News photoshopper (who will remain anonymous until the contest is completed)...

Serr8d...I just noticed your comment since I posted this picture, like most photoshoppers do, I get my source pics by google search, I found this one http://images.google.com/images?q=Al%20gore%20house&hl=en&sourceid=gd&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2006-07,GGLD:en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi, and I believe it is on your photobucket...when I do find source pics I really don't notice who's it is and just download them, weird it turned out to be a FN member. Well if I had known, I would have asked for permission, so I'm sorry...I did read what you posted on your webpage, thanks..

To which I replied..

Thanks for that.

The g00gle people pretty much hate right-wing bloggers; you notice that link didn't refer back to my site, but to some extraordinarily vacuous non-political (but SAFE! for O!) entity. My photobucket account is not opened up to g00gle; the only way g00gle found that photo was by searching my original site posting. But do I get the credit - hit for that photo? No way! Not the first time that's happened; and since I won't drink their lefty kool-aid, it surely won't be the last.

I'm moving that image around and putting up a less...attractive...alternate. Not to annoy that particular blogger, but to confound g00gle.

Again, thanks for the response.

(Eventually I'll get in the mood to do some more pshops. Right now, I'm resting my eyes. This 17" CRT monitor has to go too... )

Serr

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UPDATED, again
Another e-mailer weighs in on the subject of google, and linkages..

Hi there,

Hey I was just reading your comments under the chop which used your Al Gore's house photo.

I can totally relate to your annoyance with Google...it's something they should fix....and it's been going on for a loooong time.

I "think" the reason why the other blog is getting the credit, is because of the way google decides which site has the most relevant content relating to the image.

Now I know....it's you image...you have it at your photobucket account...so technically YOU should get the credit going to your site....but Google images is....in short....stoopid sometimes.

The other blog has the picture linked via a hyperlink with the words "Al Gore's House"....now google will think this is highly relevant....also they have a stack of text surrounding the link, this isn't what I would classify as totally relevant, but google likes hyperlinks that are surrounded by text that "might be" explaining the image.

We have the same problem on our website and 99% of the time it's from blogger blogs....only they directly "hotlink" images hosted on our own server....and for some reason, Google will give these sites the credit in Google images and not ours....which ticks me off no end!

What you "could try" is put the original image back (lol...like what you did to it re the google message though) and perhaps add some more relevant text close to the image and use a hyperlink as the other blog has done in that text....and see if Google reverts the image back to your site.

What's scary about this google glitch is that a LOT of lazy webmasters have caught on...and they go to google images, hotlink straight from images which are on the first page for hot image search terms...usually to their blogger blog...then plaster that blog with adverts (like google ads etc). If they make sure they add more relevant content that relates to an image on their page than the site which owns the image...... they have a 50/50 chance of hijacking that image in google images for their own gain :(

EG...look at this search result:
http://images.google.com.au/images?hl=en&q=angelina%20jolie&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Click on all the images from blogger blogs that show up....and then look up the top frame and see where the images have "really" come from!

In short...it sucks....but sometimes you can regain your "property" by adding extra elements to your page so that google thinks that your site is the most totally relevant to a particular image.

And from reading your most recent post on your blog, it seems you are used to the hotlinking thing....and also know that if you change the image some hotlinkers will just leave it...and you know, google will sometimes STILL give them credit, even when the image is no longer the same!

Sorry for the thesis.....but like you...I am so over this problem. Unfortunately there isn't much us mere mortals can do....google has to fix it.

I like our site's images being in google images, it brings us a stack of traffic, but if a popular image gets hijacked by a blogger blog, we can loose an awful lot of traffic...which is totally unfair.

Anyway....hope you have some better luck with google soon.

«redacted»

To which I replied..

Hey, that's some great analysis. I'll add this letter as a post update (without your e-mail address or name of course) if you don't mind. Let me know.

Yeah, I know about relevancy. Google decides. But I don't blog for cash (good thing too!); I blog for the relief factor.

I cross a lot of my posts to TennesseeFree dot com (a strictly political site, where I'm an invited guest poster) and then find that g00gle will give them a hit over my home site..no matter if there's a image involved or not. Again, relevancy, but also there are liberal-left guest posters at TF; if g00gle is torn between deciding which site gets the higher hit results, they will choose TF, every time. Some of the same posts I cross to Protein Wisdom's pub, they won't show in the g00gle results at all. There are no guest liberal posters at PW..

Google is definitely biased to the left. And there's not a damned thing we can do about it.

Best,

Serr

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