Welcome back, this is John Locke, and today I'm answering a question that a
lot of people have asked. Which is, "Can you use Google images on your website? Can you
just Google the image that you want, go to Google Images, download it, and put
that photo on your site?" The reason why I'm answering this question today is something that I
saw -- and I've seen it before in the past -- there was a particular thread
I was looking at on the Internet. This person was saying that they
did just what I described! They downloaded something from Google Images,
put it on their website, and then lo and behold, they got a email and a letter
saying that was a copyrighted image, and now they have to pay a hundred
and eighty bucks, and then they will go away, and everything will be
okay. If you simply download stuff out of Google Images,
that's usually copyrighted material. Those images are not just free to use simply because you
found them on the Internet. I think a lot of people don't
understand copyright law. Anytime that you create a creative work --
whether you write an article, write a book, take a photograph, or
write a piece of music -- all those creative works are copyrighted as soon as you create them.
If somebody takes a photo, that is their copyrighted work. They're the copyright
owner. And they can do what they want with it. If you want to use (their photo), you
have to get their permission. If you go to court over a copyright claim like
this, you're going to lose. This person that was saying that they were
on the hook for one hundred and eighty dollars. You're very lucky that it
wasn't ten times as much, because I've seen that happen as well. It
doesn't matter if you think it's a good photo or not, the fact remains, if
somebody has a copyright claim, and you use their photo without permission, you
can be sued, and you will lose. So what are some good places where you can
get high quality photos, without just downloading photos from Google
Images, so you're not going to get sued. You could definitely use stock
photography, from iStock, or Shutterstock -- there's a
million different places where you can buy stock photography. What I've
found is iStock or Getty Images usually have the most high-quality
images. But if you're on a budget, you could use something like Envato Elements, it's
pretty inexpensive (but the selection isn't very deep). There's many different places out there that you can
find regular stock photography. If you're on a budget
and you have no money at all, there's other places where you can get free
stock photos, that are free to use. Some of the places like that are Pexels,
Unsplash, Stocksnap, MorgueFile -- there's there's plenty of other ones, so I'll try
and put a list of some of them down below in the show notes.
Don't just grab something off of Google images, and think that
because you found it, it's free, and that you could use it, because it doesn't work
like that. When in doubt, either take the photo yourself, hire a
photographer to take a photo, or use stock photography. Whenever you're in
doubt, if you're in doubt at all, don't take the risk. It's not worth the
copyright claims for each photo, that you use without somebody's permission. I hope
that makes sense. My name is John Locke. My business is Lockedown Design and SEO.
We're here every single day, making videos on SEO. Thank you to all the new
subscribers, I really appreciate it. We'll be here tomorrow as well, thanks
for tuning in, and until next time, peace.