Could use some advice - I can't figure out who's using my photo...

Brody

I'm a bit puzzled here. The hits on one of my photos has climbed unusually fast (the 4th photo in my Favorites Album, Pere Lachaise - Link Below) – In the past when this happened, it’s usually been innocent misuse, but a few times it was commercial theft, and I sent an “Or Else” letter and they stopped. The problem this time is I can’t find out who’s hitting it. I’ve tried Google Analytics, SmugMug Stats and a few other tricks and nothing gives me the info I need. As you can see in the screen capture below, SmugMug Stats (for the one photo only) shows hits nearing 4,000/day after a two-week climb, but I check referrers on Smug, and it’s mostly my blogs and Google, and it totals about 50 to 100 hits daily for my whole album. That can’t possibly be triggering 4,000 hits. I’ve also used the new (or new to me at least) Google feature where you upload your image to Image Search and it searches graphically – Using this I found many other cases of misuse of some of my other photos, but nothing on this one and it’s got the highest traffic by far… :scratch

If anyone has advice on how to find the source of the hits, I’d really appreciate it.


Link to my album/photo - http://www.johnbrody.com/Travel/Favorites/2271721_MWq3LQ#!i=295698251&k=HpBmrgL

ian408

You can search for images using a tool like "TinEye" or another image search tool. However, the best thing to do is use the list of referrers in the tab on the far right. That will give you an idea of who based on volume. It'll take a moment to create the list. Use the sites on the left and the hit count on the right. Click on the hit count to generate a list of URLs.

jhofker

Looks like this might be the source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125686267144917523.html?mod=rss_most_viewed_day_europe

Based on this TinEye search: http://www.tineye.com/search/7063cf1eb11d0e36422faedf3172d27f6a27418b/

Brody

I tried using the referrers (below), but the total is a SmugMug server crushing 98 hits that day for the photo (at least I think it's only for the one photo). I traced all the referrers back and I don't see anything that could generate 4,000 to 5,000 hits a day. If the numbers under Referrer Stats are photo hits (are they?) then the stats and the referrer numbers should be the same...

Brody

jhofker wrote: »

Looks like this might be the source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125686267144917523.html?mod=rss_most_viewed_day_europe

Based on this TinEye search: http://www.tineye.com/search/7063cf1eb11d0e36422faedf3172d27f6a27418b/

Yeeesh... I forgot the WSJ used the hideous color version in the article - I licensed it to them when they were talking a B&W layout (I like the B&W version of the image - the color raw was never intended to see daylight, just shot for the conversion). My mistake, because I didn't specify in our agreement. Again I learn what happens when one assumes...

But I digress - Back to the stats - All the links in TinEye for the WSJ seem to be back to the color version which the WSJ has on their server. None of those are linked to the B&W image on my SmugMug site, so I don't think that's ending up in the stat count or the referrer info..

ian408

I'm not sure what to say. The courtesy gives a link to your site. Maybe that's a part of the increased traffic?

Did you email the help desk?

rainforest1155

Someone likely has embedded the photo in a popular blog, forum or other site. Depending on how the site is set up that has the photo embedded, the stats > referrers tab may not show it. I'd recommend that you disable the 'external links' option and that should prevent the photo from getting shown on embedded pages.

If the stats are still that high afterwards, perhaps the other popular page is linking to the photo on your site?