Which images you can use on your business website.

The short answer

Google Images is a search engine, not a library. It shows pictures from other websites, and Google's own help page warns that images might be subject to copyright. Finding a photo there gives you no right to use it.

What is safe for a business website:

• Photos you or your staff took.
• Photos from a photographer you hired, with a licence that covers the website.
• Stock photos, paid or free, under a licence that allows business use, within its limits.
• Creative Commons images whose licence allows your use, with the credit they ask for.
• Google Maps and Street View, embedded on the page the way Google allows.
• Photos customers or suppliers send you, with their permission in writing.

For each image, keep a note of where it came from and what the licence allows. If anyone ever asks, that note is your answer.

Why a photo online is not free to use

Copyright starts when a photo is taken. The US Copyright Office says an original work is protected from the moment it is created and fixed, including as a computer file, and that most works can be assumed to be protected. GOV.UK says the same for the UK: protection is automatic, with nothing to apply for and no fee. A photo needs no copyright symbol or watermark to be protected.

So nearly every image you find online is owned by whoever took it, or licensed by them to the site you found it on. That licence does not pass to you. Three beliefs come up again and again, and none of them holds:

• "I gave credit." A credit line names the owner. It does not give you their permission.
• "It had no copyright notice." It does not need one.
• "It is only a small business site." The size of the site does not change who owns the photo.

In the US, fair use allows some uses without permission, but the Copyright Office says whether a use qualifies depends on all the circumstances. A photo that decorates a business's service page is a weak candidate, and other countries have narrower exceptions still. This is general information, not legal advice for your case.

Never use an image because you could not find out who owns it. An owner you could not find is still an owner.

Your own photos are the safest

Your own photos are the safest images you can use, and usually the best for the site. A visitor who sees your real premises, team and work learns more than any stock photo can tell them, and nobody else owns them.

You do not need a professional camera. A recent phone, daylight from a window and a tidy background do most of the work. Take more than you need, of the work as well as the people: a finished kitchen, a dog after its groom, a plate as it leaves the kitchen.

If you hire a photographer, the photographer usually keeps the copyright and gives you a licence to use the photos. Agree in writing what the licence covers:

• Where you can use the photos: the website, social media, ads, print and signs.
• For how long, and whether the licence ends if you stop working together.
• Whether you can crop or edit them.
• Whether the photographer may use them in their own portfolio.

Our websites page asks clients for real photos of their premises, team and work, and suggests booking a photographer before the build starts if there are none, for exactly these reasons.

Photos customers send you

A photo a customer takes belongs to the customer. So does the photo of your cake they posted on Instagram, and the one attached to their Google review. Being in the photo, or having made what is in it, does not make it yours.

To use one, ask in writing, say where it will appear and how you will credit them, and keep their reply with a note of which photo it was. A short message is enough: "Could we use your photo of the finished garden on our website and Instagram, credited to you by first name? You can ask us to take it down at any time."

If other people are in the photo, they need to agree too. For trades and home services, before-and-after photos of a client's home should leave out house numbers, car number plates and faces unless the client agrees. In Europe, a photo of someone who can be identified is also personal data, which brings data protection rules in.

Photos of your own staff need the same care, and how to write an about page covers the permission behind them.

Stock photos, and what the licence allows

Paid stock libraries sell licences, not photos. Read what yours allows:

• Royalty-free means you pay once and can use the image many times within the licence. It does not mean free.
• A standard licence covers common business uses such as a website. Some uses, such as products for resale where the image is the main value, need a bigger licence or are not allowed at all.
• Images marked editorial use only are for news and commentary. Adobe Stock's licence terms, for example, say they may not be used for commercial purposes such as advertisements, promotions or endorsements.
• Who holds the licence matters. Adobe Stock's terms allow a licence to be transferred to one client or employer, so a designer who buys a photo for your site can hand the licence to your business.

Free stock sites have licences too. Unsplash's licence says its images can be downloaded and used for free, including commercially, with no permission needed and credit appreciated rather than required, but not sold without significant changes. Pexels' licence also needs no credit, and adds that identifiable people must not be shown in a bad light, that images must not suggest the people or brands in them endorse your product, and that they must not be used as part of your trademark or business name.

Some free photo sites also offer paid images under other terms, so check the licence on each photo's own page and save a copy. And remember that stock is shared: the same smiling receptionist may be on three competitors' sites. Use it for backgrounds, never for anything that claims to show your own work or team.

Creative Commons, with the right credit

Creative Commons licences let creators say in advance how their work may be used. The six licences are built from four elements:

• BY: you must credit the creator. Every licence includes it.
• SA, ShareAlike: if you adapt the work, you share your version under the same terms.
• NC, NonCommercial: noncommercial use only. Creative Commons defines that as use not primarily intended for commercial advantage or payment, which makes NC images a poor fit for a business's own website.
• ND, NoDerivatives: no adaptations of the work.

CC0 is separate from the six: it marks a work whose creator has given up their rights as far as the law allows.

The credit should follow Creative Commons' own advice: the title, the author, the source and the licence, with links where you can. For example: "Harbour at dawn" by [photographer's name], from [source], licensed under CC BY 4.0. Put it under the image or on a page of credits linked from it.

Google Images can filter results by licence, under Usage rights, with options for Creative Commons and for commercial and other licences. Google says the filter relies on information from the sites that host the images, and that you should always confirm an image's licence. So open the source page and check the licence there before you use anything.

Google Maps and Street View

Google's guidelines for using Maps, Earth and Street View set out what a business site may do:

• You do not need permission to embed a Google map on your website, or to link to one.
• You can embed Street View the same way, but you may not screenshot Street View imagery, or take it out of the embedded viewer, for any purpose.
• Google Earth may not be embedded online, and a few static Earth images are allowed only for non-commercial use, with attribution.
• The attribution to Google, and to its data providers where they are named, must stay next to the map, visible and uncropped.
• You must not significantly change how the map or the imagery looks.

So for directions, embed the map on your contact page or link to it. For a photo of your shopfront, your building or the street outside, take your own. A real estate agency that wants to show a street should photograph it rather than screenshot Street View, and should never reuse another agent's listing photos without the photographer's permission.

Product photos from suppliers and manufacturers

Shops often need photos of products they did not make. The safe route is the manufacturer or your supplier, many of whom give retailers image libraries for exactly this. Ask in writing and read the terms, because some limit the images to products you stock, or ask you to stop using them when you stop selling the product.

Do not copy product photos from another shop, a marketplace listing or a competitor's site. Whoever took them owns them, and a copied photo also tells shoppers your listing is the same as everyone else's. For an online store, your own photos of the product in use often sell better anyway, because they answer questions the supplier's shot does not.

Brand logos are a separate question. If you show the logos of brands you stock or work with, follow each brand's guidelines and do not suggest a partnership you do not have.

When a designer added the image

Many unlicensed images arrive through a web designer, or an employee who found a nice photo and put it up years ago. The website is yours, so a complaint about an image on it comes to your business, whoever added it. Whether you can pass the cost on depends on your contract with the designer.

At launch, or now if it never happened:

• Ask your designer for the source and licence of every image on the site.
• Ask for licences bought for your site to be in your business's name, or transferred to it where the licence allows.
• Check that your contract says the designer uses only properly licensed images, and that you send only images you have the right to use. The web design contract checklist covers that clause.
• Never send a designer a photo you found online with a note asking whether they can use it. What makes it usable is a licence, not a yes from the designer.

Keep a record of every image

Keep a simple list of every image on the site. A spreadsheet works:

• The file name and the page it appears on.
• Where it came from: your own, a named photographer, a stock site, a customer.
• The licence: its name, the image ID or a link, the date and who bought it.
• Any limits: where it may be used, until when, and the credit required.
• Where the proof is kept: the licence file, the invoice or the customer's email.

A row might read: "kitchen-oak-2.jpg, kitchens page, taken by our own fitter." Another: "team-meeting.jpg, about page, Adobe Stock, standard licence, image ID [number], bought by our designer and transferred to us, licence file in the shared drive." A few minutes for each new image saves a long search later, and the list also tells you which photos to update when the team or the premises change.

Check the images on your site now

If your site has images nobody can account for, work through them:

• List every image on the site, including old blog posts and pages nobody visits.
• For each one without a record, run a reverse image search, such as Google Lens, to see where else it appears and who took it.
• Buy a licence, ask the owner for permission, or replace it with your own photo.
• Take down anything you cannot trace. A gap on a page costs less than a claim.

If a letter or email about an image has already arrived, do not ignore it, and do not pay or reply in a hurry either. Take it to a lawyer who handles copyright, with your image records. Images made with AI tools raise questions of their own: whether you own them depends on the law where you trade, as can AI build your business website explains.