Member Avatar for MktgRob

Just read that a few weeks after Yahoo Images added the creative commons search filter, Googles Images did the same. Also, the option is not in the user interface so the filter has to be set by adding a parameter to the URL. The first question to be asked is why has Google not announced this? And why have they not made the new functionality part of the user interface? Those are questions for Google. The question I have for the Forum is how much of an impact will this have on your SEO efforts?

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Brief, practical guidance in response to ’s SEO question and ’s note about search-engine changes. Stop waiting for UI updates and make images discoverable and properly attributed now. The biggest wins come from clear, machine-readable licensing and good on-page context — not from hoping for a UI rollout.

Add machine-readable license metadata and a visible license link. Use schema.org ImageObject with a license property so crawlers can pick up the exact license, and place a human-readable license link in the image caption. Example JSON-LD (replace URLs and names):

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "ImageObject",
  "contentUrl": "https://example.com/images/photo.jpg",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Jane Doe" }
}
</script>

And a short caption:

Photo: Jane Doe. License: <a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY 4.0</a>

Embed the same rights and creator info inside the image file (EXIF/XMP/IPTC) so the data travels with the file. Keep filenames, alt text, and captions descriptive and consistent with the page topic — that context helps image indexing and click-throughs. Include images in sitemaps and monitor image traffic and impressions in Search Console or your analytics.

Expected SEO impact: licensing markup alone is unlikely to change general web rankings, but it creates a new discovery channel. Properly marked images are more likely to appear when users filter for reusable content and will attract reuse-driven referrals and attribution. Avoid mislabeling licenses — incorrect claims invite takedowns or legal issues.

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Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

I also read this morning that Sergei Brin from Google is personally spearheading a project to beef up Google's search engine in responds to Microsoft's Bing. Perhaps your comments about the image update will be announced as part of a bigger and better search engine capability by Google. Who knows....

Member Avatar for MktgRob

I also read this morning that Sergei Brin from Google is personally spearheading a project to beef up Google's search engine in responds to Microsoft's Bing. Perhaps your comments about the image update will be announced as part of a bigger and better search engine capability by Google. Who knows....

It is possible but I cannot understand how or what Google could be beefing up to in response to Bing. Yes, the flyouts in the search results are interesting and the fact that you can see mini-previews of videos before clicking on a link can be helpful. Are they going to redo the homepage to include a theme picture with little hotspots? I don't see that as a big advantage except if you were going to monitize the results of clicking on the hotspots.

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