Images for your blog from Google
Google has now updated the image search to allow you to search for images that are free to use on your blog. The images search results can now show images that have been tagged with the Creative Commons license and it is also capable of returning content under other licenses such as the GNU Free document license.
To get this feature when you are searching go to the Advanced Image Search page then under the usage rights section you will see a drop down with different types of license that you can search for.
When I tested it out I chose to search for images that were labeled for commercial reuse. Once I had typed in my search terms it then showed me a page with a label at the top:
Then under that was the normal image results, but now you know that the images are fine to use on your blog. However Google does state:
“You’ll still have to verify that the licensing information is accurate We can help you take the first step towards finding these images, but we can’t guarantee that the content we linked to is actually in the public domain, or available under the license”
Better safe than sorry
While this is going to be very useful, you will need to be careful when using this feature. Just make sure you double check that the image does have such a license (just in case).
You won’t be able to blame Google for using an image you shouldn’t have on your blog.
Don’t for forget those not on broadband
While we are on the topic of images, I wanted to point out that, for many accessing the web is simply turning on your computer and selecting your browser, but that is not the case for everyone. Some countries are still behind on Internet access and I am not just talking 3rd world countries, for example New Zealand is not quite up to the same speeds as other countries. They do have broadband but it is not as wide spread as it is in America or the UK.
Think about this when you are putting up images on your blog or website, I quite often come across some very nice images that are huge in file size and even on broadband they take a few seconds to download, imagine being on dial-up and waiting for the page to download let alone the massive image. We also have to think about users visiting your site from a mobile phone as again they don’t want to be waiting around. If they are not on a large or unlimited plan for their data they download then they don’t want your site to eat up all their data allowance.
Written by Lee Doel from The Funk HousePosted on July 11th, 2009 and filed under Blogging
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13 Responses to “Images for your blog from Google”
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Six Figure Blogging
thanks, for this amazing post
Quite nice. I am mostly using CC images from flickr for posts, Google seems to cover that and adds Wikimedia and more. Thanks for share!
I currently find most of my images from Flickr, but I’ll give that advanced search a try once in a while now as well.
Nice tip. Thanks for the heads up. I just spent the past 30 minutes finding appropriate images for my sites. Flicr is nice and all but this makes life a whole lot easier.
Awesome post.I am glad to know about this.
Thanks
Salman
http://www.tips4blogging.co.cc
Glad you all like the new feature from Google i am sure it will prove to be very useful.
This is a great measure to prevent image copyright issues. Now we can filter the images that can be reuse for other purpose on our blogs.
Thanks,
I do very much like to take care not to use images I don’t have right’s to use.
About image sizes, I often visit blogs with quite many images on the home page and most of them don’t seem to be compressed when I check them. In my homecountry they are very lax in this matter. Blog homepages can be up to 20 MB in size and images not even resized.
WOW 20mb! that is massive, can you imagine being on a mobile phone or on dial-up waiting for it to load.
Thanks for the heads up. I didn’t know they have fine tuned the image search.
I have to admit, I find putting a few bucks into my account at istockphotography is much more worth my time and efforts. For a little over a buck a photo, I can find something that fits my needs so much quicker and looks good for blogs posts, etc. . I get lost in a lot of crappy photos on Flickr.
Yes searching some of the Creative Commons images on Flickr can be a bi tedious and if you can find a few images that are only a dollar it isn’t such a bad idea but istock seems to be getting dearer every time i log in!