If you own a website or blog, then chances are at some point you’ve needed to hit the interwebs to search for an image to use on it. If you’re using an image for commercial purposes, then you need to have the rights to use it from the original creator. Previously Google Image Search would pull all the images on the web up in a search, now its added a filter to help you see only pictures you can actually use.

The new advanced search interface allows you to filter images in five different ways

1. not filtered by license
2. free to use or share
3. free to use or share even commercially
4. free to use share or modify
5. free to use, share or modify, even commercially

What that means is as a content creator you can now easily find images that you can use, as well as images that you can legally use in advertising for your business or modify to better meet your own personal needs. As a blogger I obviously tend to need quite a few images over the course of a day, so this is an amazing new tool. For people like resturant and small business owners this will make it easier to find images that they can use in menus, posters, billboards and other commercial work.

Hopefully another effect of the advanced search will be that people will start to cut back on using images that are not for commercial purposes. I’ve encoutered quite a few blogs and websites that appear to just do a Google search for iamges they’re looking for and take what they want.  Now that there’s an easy option for doing it legally hopefully more people will take advantage and do things the legal way.

Do any of you use Google Image Search for your business? What do you think about the new options? Can you see yourself using them?

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