High-quality images are in high demand in recent times. People prefer sharing pictures of any object or place instead of writing a lengthy text about it. It has also been observed that websites having attractive and captivating images often succeed in getting the attention of the targeted audience. Therefore, webmasters often look for engaging and relevant pictures that can enhance the attractiveness of their content and get the eyes of everyone.
There are hundreds of people out there who misuse and duplicate the content on the web without asking for it. Image theft is one of the most common cybercrimes in recent times. These copycats steal the picture they find attractive and relevant and paste in their work without any permission. Fortunately, you can opt for different ways that can assist you in countering this image theft. In this blog, we are going to explain the entire process of tracing image theft and how to remove it from Google.
The first and foremost thing to counter image stealing is reaching the cybercriminals. You can take the assistance of an advanced reverse image search tool to find the online platforms having the same picture. Users upload images and this utility starts processing your image, compares it with billions of images from the internet, and provides matched results instantly.
Once you find the site having your image, the next step is to contact the owner of that site. You can find the contact information on the Contact Us page of the website. Many sites have this information on their Home Pages. In case you can’t find the contact details of the site owner, do a Whois search. Simply go to Google.com and type (whois “Sitename”). You will get the site administrator or registrant’s email address instantly.
Once you find the email address of the site owner, simply ask to remove your images from their site. The copyright act gives you the support to take action against any copycats. This act clearly states that any information on the web is the sole property of its creator, and no one can use it without the creator’s permission. You can ask the site owner to remove the image from his/her site to avoid any legal action. Moreover, you can also use this situation for your site’s promotion. If the site using your image is relevant to your niche, then you can ask for backlinks. Getting high-quality and natural backlinks from leading sites will definitely help your rank higher in search engines.
If the site owner agrees to delete the image from its site, it will eventually be removed from all the search engines. But, in case he/she denies your request, you can directly ask Google to remove this picture from its search engine. The steps to request Google for an image removal are shared below.
You can also examine the status of your image removal application on the Remove Outdated Content page.
There are certain types of images that Google will surely delete on your request. A few of the most prominent types of images that you can ask Google to delete are as follows:
In the last analysis, removing an image from Google becomes essential in different situations. The information we have jotted in the blog would have provided you with the significance of the reverse image search tool in finding the sites using your images. Moreover, the method stated in this blog would allow you to request Google for an image removal.