AP 0828: Can I Use Images from Google on My Website?

AskPat 828 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everyone. Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 828 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week. We have a great question today from Glen but before we get to that I do want to thank today's sponsor which is Design Crowd.

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All right now here's today's question from Glen.

Glen: Hey Pat, this is Glen. I have a quick question about using images from Google Images. I need some images for some presentations that I'm doing and these will be online. The problem is I try to go to iStock and I try to go to a lot of these other places and find the right images but I'm looking for very specialized images, they just don't have them, they just don't have the images I need on these other sites. I'd like to buy them if I can but they just don't have the right images but I can go on Google Images and find the right image in a matter of seconds. What are the legal implications of using something from Google Images or from anyone's site really? What are the risks involved? Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey Glen, than you so much for the question. Do not, and I repeat, do not just go to Google Images and find images there and use them without taking some further precautions. The reason is you can get a Cease and Desist letter if a person finds out you are using their copyrighted images and typically the ones you find there aren't in any way shape or form allowed to be used by other people. That's just Google search engine to find images. It doesn't say anything about actually using them. It's stealing and you don't want that to happen and if the Cease and Desist letter sometimes is followed by a lawsuit. We don't want that to happen.

I understand that you aren't able to find the images that you're looking for and there's a few things you can do, you can find free to use images on Google so there are some filters that you can use to make sure that the images that do pop up are ones that you can use. If you go to Advanced Image search you can put; you can switch the usage rights and make sure that you can use them. There are different kinds of usage rights through Google.

There are free to use or share which allows you to copy or reproduce the content if the content remains unchanged. There's a different one called free to use, share or modify which allows you to copy, modify or redistribute in ways specified in the license specifically. Lastly, is a commercial if you want the content for commercial use you have to make sure you specify an option that includes the word “Commercially,” in it. That's what I would recommend doing if you still want to use Google.

You can get lucky and find the images you need an still be able to use them. Make sure that you follow the license a lot of the times you still have to give credit to who took that photo or who owns that image so I would keep that in mind. Another place you can go to if you're not finding the images that you need is Flickr, F-L-I-C-K-R.com and if you go to their creative common section there are millions and millions and millions of photos that you can use freely but most of them you have to credit the photographer and I've done that several times.

Whether it's a blog post or a presentation just having the link somewhere that can be seen or maybe in the collective area at the end or somewhere in that presentation so long as that person has credit for it. Yes, most of the time they're not even going to know but just practicing these good things, good things will happen to you. That's what I feel is the right thing to do and that's what I would recommend. Creative Commons there are different kinds of license there you can read about them and we'll also put a link in the show notes for this episode for a specific resource that I've written in the past related to using stock images that has a little bit more information, a little bit more detailed information about the free to use images.

Lastly about the stock images that you buy, the royalty free ones, there's many different sites, not just iStock photo there's DepositPhotos.com that I've had a lot of success with before. Sometimes you have to get very creative with how you search. Sometimes what you're looking for isn't always connected to the key words that might pull up an image that need. Think out the box sometimes and you might actually find those images that you're looking for.

All right so Glen, thank you so much of the question I appreciate this. I want to send you an AskPat T-shirt but your question came in without an email address so Glen if you're listening to this and I hope I just don't get a ton of emails from people named Glen. You know, honor system, this is what this is about. So Glen send me an email if you'd like the shirt and we'll hook you up with that. Anybody else who has a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.

As always, I'm going to end with a quote and this quote today comes from Kay William Cap, “Had there been a computer a hundred years ago it would probably have predicted that by now there would be so many horse drawn vehicles it would be impossible to clear up all the manure.” Interesting quote but I like it. All right, take care and I'll see you in then next episode of AskPat. Bye.