Strange traffic patterns here at The B'port News

This past week or so we've had an unusually large traffic spike from some very far-away places.

Some days we've had around 3,000 hits on our counter.

They're all looking at a post we put up shortly after the death of Michael Jackson.

What's drawing the far-off readers is not the words we put up (we were just linking to and paraphrasing a story we liked in the LA Times) but a picture we found of MJ on Google images, in which he was all bundled up with a scarf around his face and a fedora on his head, lookin all mysterioso and weird.

The photo was striking to us.

The thing is, if you click on the post now, the image won't appear. One of those copyright problems, I guess.

The confusing part is, the traffic kept coming. From Slovenia, Lithuania and other places I've never been. Thousands of 'em. All from a Google image search to that photo.

So my question is, can those people way over there see the MJ photo on my Web site while us Americans can't see it? Why would that be?

Or do they just see the photo link to my Web site, and when they click on it, they don't see the photo, just the little blue box?