This Summer John Mueller (@JohnMu), Google’s Search Liaison, let everyone know some very useful information about images in regards to SEO for Google Search.
Mueller was asked if an original photo needs to be used to get the best results for SEO?
“It doesn’t matter for web-search directly.”
This would make sense on the surface as a website can use any image it wants to help convey it’s message. Even something abstract without a clear, direct message. Obviously this can save money on any website’s marketing budget since original photos require time or money to procure.
Free Stock Images Ok For SEO But What About For GMB?
Can the same be said for a Google My Business profile? Nope.
If you try to use stock photography for a GMB profile (the #1 component for local SEO) it’s quite possible the photo might be rejected and/or not shown (Plenty of personal experience with this through working with multiple GMB profiles over the years). This makes perfect sense when the photo is being used for verification and not expression. It’s not to say that you can’t upload all types of photos to a GMB profile but Google still requests original outdoor and indoor photos of any physical business location.
No Duplicate Content Penalty?
Then there is always the matter of duplicate content. Google hates duplicate content and exact match content will simply not be ranked. Does this rule apply to images though? John Mueller’s statement is one thing but this long term duplicate image experiment seems to send a different message suggesting there is actually a slight ranking advantage to original images, however, the heads of the experiment admit that “although this experiment shows a clear advantage for sites with unique images, it does not convey in any way the strength this advantage has in comparison with other signals.”
Google uses several signals but the overall feeling is that stock photos won’t hurt SEO but they are still missing a signal advantage and maybe more as image identification technology continues to improve.