Learn from my mistakes. Be careful how you use Flickr

[EverythingEverywhere]

My website uses a lot of photos.

Compared to other websites which are photo heavy, I get very little traffic from Google and ZERO traffic from Google images. (I managed to look at referring traffic from sites on ProjectWonderful)

I went into Google images and realized that as far as it is concerned, I have no images on my site. All the links go back to Flickr. In stead of getting hundreds (if not thousands) of visitors per week from Google Image searching, I get nothing.

I'm going to have to go through each of my daily photos and change the link and create a copy of the image on my site.

What is worse, is that I have been telling other bloggers to use Flickr. I'll still use Flickr, but not for anything which shows up on my website.

[ittgx]

Thank you for reminding. I have never touched Flickr.

[Bloggeries]

Thanks for the heads up. That's horrible as I'm sure you're missing out on thousands of visits. Thanks for altering the rest of us here though. It does make sense but I'm sure many never thought of it before either.

[QuirkyJessi]

Wow, I had no idea that Flickr worked that way.

[Wayne Liew]

I made the same mistake since I started my blog and only during earlier this year I start hosting my own images. The images are still not indexed, perhaps Google has labeled my site as a no image site.

[EverythingEverywhere]

You have to go to Google Webmaster tools to turn on image searching.

Someone could create a simple WordPress plugin to automatically take a copy of the Flickr image, put it on your server, and change the link.

That plugin would kick ass...

[Wayne Liew]

Originally Posted by EverythingEverywhere

You have to go to Google Webmaster tools to turn on image searching.

Someone could create a simple WordPress plugin to automatically take a copy of the Flickr image, put it on your server, and change the link.

That plugin would kick ass...

How long does it take for Google to index my image? Yes, I opted into it via Google Webmaster Tools right from the time I started my blog.

[kirbybowl]

I had the same problem when I first started my photo blog. I posted all my images on Flickr. What I do now is use Blogger or photobucket to post images on my website and post "preview" images (1 photo from the photo set) on Flickr with the corresponding link to my post.

It seems to work, I am getting more referrals from Flickr now (it's also a great way to advertise your site). Flickr also has really high priority on Google, which can be good for search engine placement)

[EverythingEverywhere]

I now put my URL in the description field for every photo I submit. I'd prefer to get the Google traffic directly to my site, but I'll take what I can get.

Google Images may take a week or two. Make sure you are using your alt and title attributes correctly on the IMG tag.

[Bloggeries]

What about adding them to your server from now on?