[Northern Soul]

I have flickr, and have done for years. Most of my pictures get looked at twice, if at all.

Over the years I've had a few that have had a few hundred hits, and one (of FC Barcelona's football stadium) that has had over 2,000.

I often take pictures of cars that interest me. Today I saw a very early version of a diesel Alfa 156, a car I used to own, so I took a quick picture, from the open window of my car because it was raining. A snap shot. Nothing more. The composition was dictated by the fact I had my 80-200 lens on, and there weren't many parking spaces where I could pull over.

So, it a picture of a fairly common car (most people won't notice it's a really early one, and you can't tell from the picture anyway) from a not very interesting angle - and in 4 hours or so it's had over 3,000 views.

Any one experienced anything similar? The stats on flickr just list all the hits as an unknown source. I just wish people were looking at the pictures I've taken that I like!

[vievetrick]

Interesting, maybe how you tagged it or someone picked it up and linked in a car website. I have had strange big number hits on vid's on YouTube that to me are no big deal but have ben viewed a few hundred or thousand times. Tagging or titles make a big difference in search engines

[twitch]

Have you check the referers in the stats menu? It could be in explore, it could be linked to by someone with a big following in twitter?

I have one pic that made barely a ripple when I posted it 9 months ago, but now gets a consistent trickle of hits daily from "an unknown source". Who knows, it's a mystery.

[Northern Soul]

I'm a lazy tagger - it has no tags at all, but seems to have topped out at 3,852 views in 12 hours or so - almost all from 'unknown source'

Most odd.

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Last edited by Northern Soul; 06-13-2011 at 02:21 AM.

[tonyjayice]

you should use a page called tineye TinEye Reverse Image Search

it finds the same picture if it appears anywhere else on the web (someone copied or shared it, etc.) so you'll know if someone is using the picture..

[Northern Soul]

Thanks Tony - the tineye mention on the screenshot above is me checking for it, but there was no trace - will check again though in case it hadn't been indexed that quickly.

[asw66]

I get some unexpected traffic from google searches occasionally, but nothing as dramatic as this.

[Mike Cash]

My most dramatic and unexplained weird Flickr Stats day was this:

I never did figure out what the heck happened there.

Here lately I get anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of my view from unknown sources. I get quite a few hits everyday on a few very mundane shots and it took me several days to figure out that they have in common that they are tagged with "Nissan".

[Northern Soul]

Funny you should mention mundane pictures of Nissan's getting more hits than they deserve. I uploaded this yesterday - it's a really bad grab from the car which I only uploaded because it's such a rare car (only 5 in the UK with current road tax)




The picture of the Alfa has has 3 hits since the first rush I think.

[vicentesagredo]

so many blogs of so many different things with so many followers may be the reason.

[twitch]

That does it, from now on I'm going to start tagging my pics on flickr with "nissan"

[Mike Cash]

The really weird thing is....none of my photos tagged "Nissan" are of Nissan cars.

[RXrenesis8]

You might have more luck on google images than on tineye. I made a thread about it: https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/general-photography/148857-google-search-image.html


I would try this out right now for you but it doesn't appear to work in IE6

[TER-OR]

A few of my fisheye images are linked to a couple blogs - without permission, but I don't mind.
Kiowa NOSE | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

The most viewed is a picture of skunk tracks in snow. That's a steady hitter, all by searches.
Skunk tracks in snow | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

That seems to start getting more hits late in the fall. We have no shortage of skunks, one of the huskies has been hit at least 6 times. He either doesn't learn or doesn't care...

[twitch]

Well the results from the "nissan" test are in, I tagged 2 of my existing photos with "nissan", here are the photos....



As you can see not a nissan in sight (other than in the tag).

Overnight the view count on my whole photostream jumped up (no comments or favourites though), seems as though every single photo in my stream was viewed 4 or 5 times. This has never happended before.

My theory is there is a "bot"/"spider" that is watching for the "nissan" tag in flickr photos and then scrapes through the whole photo stream. Why it does it multiple times I don't know...