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New Google Image Search kills my traffic.

I have more than a few sites and some of them are very image heavy. With the old Google Image Search, I was able to break users out of Google and send them to my sites. This increased their chances of seeing my site, my other content, and my ads. However, with the latest Google Image Search re-design, the users never make it to my site.

Google Analytics Drop Off

I realize that Google is going to make changes based on the best interest of their users, but this stinks. As a webmaster, watching my traffic drop off is a horrible thing, especially when there isn’t much I can do about it.

One option I have is to block Google Image Search completely, but that seems drastic. I still love Google and I want to figure out how to work with them, not cut them off. Plus it wouldn’t fix anything.

Another idea could be to add an image overlay that says, “Click for full resolution” to my images and serve up that graphic to Google in hopes that users would click through. Not sure if it’s worth the time though.

What I really need to do is figure out how engaged these users were. If they came from Google Image Search, did they do anything but take the image? Have I really lost any users that matter?

What will be interesting is to see how the advertising dollars play out. Will my AdSense earnings go down? Probably if any of my ads are based on pageviews; however I think most of mine are on clicks. So far, it’s to soon to tell. It does seem like I’ve had some downturn, but without even a month’s worth of data, its way to soon to say.

It’s really sad to see analytics that just drop off, but that’s the game webmasters play on the internet. Now it’s about figuring out what the next steps are to get traffic back, and see what Google does next.


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