Google Image Search hijacking

I put an original photo a few years ago. Google photos search has always linked the photo back to my own website.

Through the years, some people used my photo and shared it on their website - I am fine with that.

Recently, Google photos search results still show my photo, but they linked it to another site (the site also has my photo).

Why is that? How does this hijacking work?

Any number of reasons... it could be the site has more authority than yours, has more (better quality) links to the image itself (I do that often with sites), the page it is on has more (better quality) links... the image loads faster on their site than on yours... there really are a number of factors.

If its copyrighted, get it removed from other sites.

BassTrackerBoats said:

Any number of reasons... it could be the site has more authority than yours, has more (better quality) links to the image itself (I do that often with sites), the page it is on has more (better quality) links... the image loads faster on their site than on yours... there really are a number of factors.

Click to expand...

I can 100% agree with BTB on this.

It is just not hijacking, you can have image on your site siteyour.com/yourimage.jpg and if site with more authority links your image (on YOUR source source server) with simple IMG tag, if their page is more relevant and does pretty much everything that BTB said that site will outrank you for sure on image search and yet image will be hosted on your site (unless you forbid hotlinking). This is just the way it works.