This is interesting. So Headspace2, the badass plugin that I'm using over on Needcoffee currently, has a Frame Breaker built into it.

WTF is a Frame Breaker?

Well, you know how when you search in Google Images, you get presented the site below a Google frame up top? The Frame Breaker breaks you out of that frame, natch, so you get served the site without the Google flavoring up top.

I always did wonder about that, so I flicked it on. That was around the 22nd or 23rd of October.

I decided to come back and check to see how it had affected my traffic on Google Images.

Now, let me state this up front. My understanding is that Google Images doesn't update very often. And I also understand that for the majority of my images, I haven't SEO'd them up worth a good goddamn because at the time I was putting them up, I had no idea why I should. (Of course, people still seem to find me and force me to do shit like this.)

So I don't have a great deal of traffic coming in anyway. But let's look.

Google Images spiked the day I turned it on, then went to a reasonable trickle.

As for Google Images.ca? I went from a trickle…to nothing.

Google Images.uk? From an erratic mess to…nothing.

And pretty much on down the line.

Did it do anything to my regular Google results? No. No discernable change.

In fact, if I just do "images" and pull that chart up, I spike, and then crater.

Fascinating. Now. One of two things is happening.

1. Either Google Images doesn't like the frame break and has something built in which makes me show up lower in the results because of it. Or…

2. Google Images needs the frame to show up as Google Images in my Analytics.

I don't know which. If I had a huge amount of Google Images traffic, I would be able to see if my Google hits went up an equivalent amount, so maybe Images traffic was being counted as regular traffic. Just a theory.

Or, if I had Analytics installed on my Version 3 archival part of the site, which has no Frame Breaker, I could see if it suffered, yes or no.

I've heard rumors that breaking the frame caused Google Images to not speak to you anymore, but never really saw that substantiated. And trying to Google terms like "frame breaker google images penalty" and the like didn't really get me anywhere.

Either way, I'm taking off the Frame Breaker. I'll see if it changes anything and if so, how quickly. And hopefully, I'll get Google Images out here to reindex my site with the SEO'd bits I do have.

If anybody has their own experience, I'd love to hear it.