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So we see that most SEOs believe a competitor can hurt your search rankings, we also wrote an article on How To Penalize Your Competitor's Site in Google but now we have a new WebmasterWorld thread on image search.
The WebmasterWorld thread discusses a major flaw in Google Image search's SafeSearch solution. As we discussed in the past, many people found themselves being filtered out of Google image search, when their images are not adult in nature. So I offered up some tips on getting your images out of the safesearch filter hell. But does it always work? Not even close.
The WebmasterWorld thread discusses how if you have adult-related sites linking to your images or including your images on their sites, then Google may apply the safesearch filter to your images, even if the image is not adult in nature.
As Tedster explains, "Google Image Search does seem to have a problem dealling with hotlinking, and that means your site suffers." This is an ongoing issue with Google Image search, which doesn't necessarily impact Google searchers directly, but does impact them indirectly. Not only that, SEOs and Webmasters do take notice, when they see their Google Image Search traffic drop and never recover due to a bad hotlink.
Clearly, if hotlinking can hurt your Google Image search rankings, what is to stop your competitors from having adult sites hotlink your images on their sites?
Can Google outline measures Webmasters can take to avoid such a serious issue?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
