Need help tracking links to some of my pics

KurtPreston

I started getting an inordinate amount of hits against original size pics in a few of my galleries (bird pics mostly) and have tried all the methods I know short of trying to hack my way into Smugmug server logs to look at HTTP-Referers I've tried Yahoo SIte Explorer, Google link:www.whatever.com, other Google tricks as well as going out to Digg and StumbleUpon and doing searches. No luck with those pics (though I have found a few linked I didn't know were of use to anyone *chuckle*)

There is at least 10 times more numerous hits against the original size vs all the other sizes (including thumbs) so I am fairly certain it has to be links from some site(s) somewhere. Can't be that many people ordering prints as it is in the thousands.

I'm just very curious as it started just after the new year and seems to be picking up steam, and spreading to new pics as well. Any thoughts would be appreciated ... or just 10 minutes access to smugmug web server logs :rofl

As a last resort I suppose I could replace the existing pics being hit with versions that have a plea for anyone to email me where they saw it ... but that just seems so crude

rainforest1155

Hi Kurt,

Apart from using Statcounter / Google Analytics, there's no way to get additional details on stats. Of course, this only works if the photos are not embedded anywhere. Check #40 of our customization faq.

To prevent original views, just set the 'largest size available' to anything else then original in 'customize gallery'. That would prevent the originals from being available for viewing.

To prevent embedding, set 'external links' to no. That should take care of them being embedded in any forum.

Sebastian

KurtPreston

Thanks I'm not wanting to prevent them necessarily ... just want to find out who it is. Correct me if I am wrong, but the smug header or other customizations are NOT applied to direct hyperlink accesses of the .jpg files? Which is what I suspect is going on. At a guess, I suspect they get the original image reference from one of the RSS feeds and recraft the URL.

If this is the appropriate place, I'd like to add a new feature request for improved, integrated tracking of HTTP-Referers to page and direct image views. It's something I'd certainly pay extra for

Allen

KurtPreston wrote:

Thanks I'm not wanting to prevent them necessarily ... just want to find out who it is. Correct me if I am wrong, but the smug header or other customizations are NOT applied to direct hyperlink accesses of the .jpg files? Which is what I suspect is going on. At a guess, I suspect they get the original image reference from one of the RSS feeds and recraft the URL.

If this is the appropriate place, I'd like to add a new feature request for improved, integrated tracking of HTTP-Referers to page and direct image views. It's something I'd certainly pay extra for

Might try this.
http://www.webcabcomponents.com/solutions/marketing/linked.html

KurtPreston

Allen wrote:

Might try this.
http://www.webcabcomponents.com/solutions/marketing/linked.html

Thanks! I forgot about Alta Vista Ends up being a smaller subset of the search results Google shows for the same type of link: query I did previously.

mbellot

Sadly, GA and AltaVista don't work for links from Facebook so there is no way to track those back to their origin.

KurtPreston

Thanks! I'm beginning to they are linked somewhere that blocks search engine crawls. I went ahead and replaced one with a 'message version' and we'll see what happens.