Accidental Twitter Case Study with Instant Results

[lafours]

Last week I noticed 400 hits in one day to a new site of mine from Twitter. The site had only been up a week with very little promotion so thought this was massively strange. Turned out, the photographer of an image I'd used on the site was ranting on twitter about how this site had used his image without permission. He'd linked to the site and all his followers were clicking through to see the outrage. The next day I went from nowhere to #67 on google.com.

Proof that twitter traffic effects rankings. Admittedly, it's a very low searched term EMD but still...

There's two ways you can take this:-

1. Use bots/services to get twitter traffic
2. Cause a bit of outrage....

 

[peter73]

how did the photographer find out that you used his image?

 

[lafours]

how did the photographer find out that you used his image?

I have absolutely no idea. It was a one week old site with only whois/indexer links.

 

[busaboss]

If that's a low competition and low search EMD, I think it can rank on that position automatically. It happened to me without doing anything actually and I reached 30.

 

[lafours]

If that's a low competition and low search EMD, I think it can rank on that position automatically. It happened to me without doing anything actually and I reached 30.

Yes, it's possible, could just be a coincidence or it could be a quick mini boost.

 

[tazplay]

Is it possible that you didn't change the name of the image prior to placing it on your site?

 

[lafours]

Is it possible that you didn't change the name of the image prior to placing it on your site?

It is possible. I deleted it right away though so it's all good.

 

[BrianKade001]

I can feel the situation you had been at that moment. This reminds of a precarious situation I was last year when a photographer sent me a threatening that he'd sue me for using his photograph. My website was possibly on 3rd or 4th page at that time, so I had never expected such a thing to happen. It was shocking and at the same hilarious because the photographer was threatening to cough up $5000 for the pic. I simply deleted the pic and never replied his mails. Hahaha .. But, I have learnt my lessons. Thereafter, I make modifications in the pic and ensure that it's different than the original picture.

 

[peter73]

Can you elaborate more on how you modify the pics? I could save us a lot of headaches in the future. What I personally do is to lighten/darken the image a bit or apply a bit gaussian blur. Do you think this is enough?

 

[lafours]

I can feel the situation you had been at that moment. This reminds of a precarious situation I was last year when a photographer sent me a threatening that he'd sue me for using his photograph. My website was possibly on 3rd or 4th page at that time, so I had never expected such a thing to happen. It was shocking and at the same hilarious because the photographer was threatening to cough up $5000 for the pic. I simply deleted the pic and never replied his mails. Hahaha .. But, I have learnt my lessons. Thereafter, I make modifications in the pic and ensure that it's different than the original picture.

Good on you, there is a lesson to be learned from such events. I knew nothing bad would come of it, a one week old site, nowhere on google, not a penny made from it....but yes always change it around if you're going to use an image you shouldn't.

 

[beaglejuice]

Check this out

[URL]http://www.kevinandamanda.com/whatsnew/tutorials/how-to-see-if-your-photos-are-being-used-on-another-site.html[/URL]

I have absolutely no idea. It was a one week old site with only whois/indexer links.

 

[lafours]

Check this out

[URL]http://www.kevinandamanda.com/whatsnew/tutorials/how-to-see-if-your-photos-are-being-used-on-another-site.html[/URL]

That could have been it.

 

[beaglejuice]

Anyway, please continue with your case study. I've experienced in the past that images, memes, etc. are very powerful traffic generating mediums specially if shared on social networks.