You must have seen images on some websites as been watermarked to hold the belongingness. This is not the only reason for which images have been watermarked. Many webmasters used to mark the images thinking that it will boost up their ranking on search engines. 

Well when Google consulted with Peter Linsley video star, and Product Manager for Image Search at the ‘plex to discuss regarding this, he remarked, “It’s understandable that webmasters find watermarking images beneficial”. 

As per Google’s recent blog post, watermarked images are good in some respect and bad in others. Like with marked images photographers can claim the recognition for their art and reuse of the image without any discretion by the owner can be avoided. 

As I discussed in the starting, some webmasters consider it as a helping hand in boosting search traffic. Google findings states: 

- Images without watermarks are of better quality and resolution.
- Thus they look much more focused in thumbnail size and are user friendly.
- Images with loud watermarks, borders, excessive text make the image look distorted when seen as a thumbnail.

 Google summed it up as: User friendliness should always be preferred. If watermarking or any other such feature decreases the quality of the image or its thumbnail for the users, then ultimately the search traffic will decrease accordingly. To be sure, just check its thumbnail version and preview how it will look to the user. 

Peter added, “The presence of a watermark doesn’t itself cause an image to be ranked higher or lower.” 

So, to be concluded it’s the user perceived quality of the image that can influence its popularity and increase in search traffic.

Bookmark & Share

No related posts.