: How do I get watermarked versions of images indexed in Google search but allow users to see clean high quality images once on my site? I have a site where much of the focus are the images

@Eichhorn148

Here is an article about this where they explain how to implement it. Show full images on your own site, but only show the watermarked version in Google image search.

The basic technique is to choose which version to serve (watermarked or clean) based on HTTP Referer and User Agent.


If the HTTP Referer is from your own site, show the clean version.
If the HTTP User Agent is a bot, show the clean version.
All other requests get the watermarked version.


That way the Googlebot can view the clean versions (so they can rank them), but users only see the clean version once they are on your site.

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@Hamaas447

The ideal way would be handling this at nginx level.

Do something like this:


If page requested == "/images/watermark.jpg"
If useragent == bot
Rewrite (internal) to something like "/images/bot/watermark.jpg"




Step 1

Add this in your nginx config.

map $http_user_agent $limit_bots {
default 0;
~*(google|bing|yandex|msnbot) 1;
~*(AltaVista|Googlebot|Slurp|BlackWidow|Bot|ChinaClaw|Custo|DISCo|Download|Demon|eCatch|EirGrabber|EmailSiphon|EmailWolf|SuperHTTP|Surfbot|WebWhacker) 1;
~*(Express|WebPictures|ExtractorPro|EyeNetIE|FlashGet|GetRight|GetWeb!|Go!Zilla|Go-Ahead-Got-It|GrabNet|Grafula|HMView|Go!Zilla|Go-Ahead-Got-It) 1;
~*(rafula|HMView|HTTrack|Stripper|Sucker|Indy|InterGET|Ninja|JetCar|Spider|larbin|LeechFTP|Downloader|tool|Navroad|NearSite|NetAnts|tAkeOut|WWWOFFLE) 1;
~*(GrabNet|NetSpider|Vampire|NetZIP|Octopus|Offline|PageGrabber|Foto|pavuk|pcBrowser|RealDownload|ReGet|SiteSnagger|SmartDownload|SuperBot|WebSpider) 1;
~*(Teleport|VoidEYE|Collector|WebAuto|WebCopier|WebFetch|WebGo|WebLeacher|WebReaper|WebSauger|eXtractor|Quester|WebStripper|WebZIP|Wget|Widow|Zeus) 1;
~*(Twengabot|htmlparser|libwww|Python|perl|urllib|scan|Curl|email|PycURL|Pyth|PyQ|WebCollector|WebCopy|webcraw) 1;
}


Step 2

Check for bot in location block as:
(this is generic, you can also check only for watermark.jpg)

location / {
if ($limit_bots = 1) {
rewrite ^/images/(.*).(png|jpg|gif) /images/bot/. ;
}
}

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@Sherry384

You should not do that, for reasons already mentioned by the comments.
You could filter by user-agent strings. You can find a list of about 300 common user-agents given by bots here: www.robotstxt.org/db.html. Run through that list and decide what to show. But doing this for every pic? You can also check your logs to find out which bots are visiting and only check on them. But again: you better mark all images and only deliver high quality after payments.

The user-agent story is an answer at: stackoverflow.com/questions/422969/how-to-recognize-bots-with-php

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