Matt Cutts Hinted Using Stock Photos Would Be A Ranking Factor In Future

Matt Cutts from Google has answered a question about the effect of using stock photos in ranking yesterday. It is very clear from the video that Google doesn’t use this as a ranking factor now. But he mentioned that it will be in future and said image sites with original images would be ranked higher than that sites using full of stock photos.

On another note, it is clear from Google guidelines that using others’ images in your site is not problematic but it is better to give credibility to the original site with a link to the source. Moreover the use of duplicate image is a copyright issue. So, generally people avoid this practice. But there are ample methods to edit the images to give it a new look and many people are doing this. Hope, Google will figure out successful methods to address such issues.

Dillip K Mohanty

He is the co-founder & director of SUVAANCE Internet Marketing Services Pvt. Ltd. He is passionate about search marketing & Google algorithm and is actively writing on these here.