I happened upon an image of mine in Google search results and when I clicked on the link back to 123rf, I was surprised to see a link above the image to "free images". I hadn't seen that on any of the image pages on 123rf before.

The link goes to their free section - which I don't contribute to - but it only appears if you land on that page via a Google search. If you search on the site, you get the regular image page, no link to the free section. See a screen shot comparison below.

To me, it seemed that the result was to encourage someone away from my image to the free section, and I couldn't see why on earth that was a good idea - for me or for 123rf. There was nothing in my search that indicated I was looking for free images. None of the other sites (that I saw on the checks I did for IS, SS, DT, CanStock, FotoSearch, Pixmac, etc.) do this.

Any opinions on this from other contributors?

Glad to see a quick response - thanks.

Once you've made the change, let us know and we can take a look and see. I'm still not sure I understand how the revised presentation will avoid the implied message (as I read it) that someone shouldn't bother buying the image they clicked on but go for a freebie instead.

I have nothing against the free section, but I thought the goal was to convert freebies into sales, not the reverse...