So, I just saw an interesting thread posted by a fellow member regarding how his competitors are using non unique images and he is using unique images for his german blog. So this question came to my mind. Has anyone ever done an experiment related to this please?
Thanks in advance for your answers and cheers!
You might be referring to my thread, so let me elaborate further
Non-unique images has highest impact for new blogs with low DA, i have seen very high DA sites, well established for several years and they use images right from google images, and they rank well, sometimes if high DA site does this, google will change the link in google images to that of high DA site, i have seen it several times, bcz google never repeats same image, there has to be variation, even if it is as small as cropping or adding something in the image.
We have tested a lot, at least on 10+ sites, and seen there is surely an impact with non-unique images (again this is for new sites with low DA)
Google is smart and it has already made sense what the topic is, for example if it is a person, and you post unique image of any random person, you will not rank.
In this case we try to find a youtube video of person, and take screen shot of frame of that person, check on google image, by uploading image if it is unique, we proceed if it is indeed unique and not found in google's database.
We have also tested that sometimes freepik or any free to use image can also rank.
For example once it was about a person marriage, so we used a image of couple holding hands with wedding theme in background, it ranked quite well, in-fact in top 3 spots.
So if you use general free to use image, it can also work, but theme of image should be according to topic.
additionally as these are free to use images, so they are always already present in Googles database, but we try to make sure that the specific image does not shows in Google's images when our target keyword is searched.
Hope this explanation helps.
