All Traffic Was Not Created Equal

Recently I’ve written about image search optimization. Not too long ago I began to reap the benefits of tediously setting up images across all my sites a specific way. One day this week my site traffic spiked way up. I was pretty excited until I found out that 90 out of 100 of the new visitors were all visiting though google image search. They were all looking for one particular image on my server.

So realistically I didn’t actually gain any new readers at all, but I did gain over a extra hundred people. I was tempted to delete the image and move on, but I stopped to think about what possible benefits I could get from this newfound traffic source. It’s a very small image they are after and it doesn’t put much extra load on my server by letting people download it. However the extra traffic could help give me a boost in Alexa rankings or page rank, and I feel like I’m providing some kind of service for the people by letting them come and take my pictures, even it they have no interest in what I’m talking about. Especially as much as I’ve used Google image search in the past.

In the end I decided that even though this group may never click ads or even read my articles, if I could get 1 out of 100 people to come back and visit, then its a worthwhile investment. So what would you say if more people came to your website everyday just to find an image and then left, than actually came to appreciate your work. Would you welcome them in or would you take down the picture and ask the moochers to get their kicks somewhere else? Share your opinions in the comment section.

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