Your website · Updated October 23, 2026
Can we use a photo we found online on our website?
Updated October 23, 2026
Only if its license lets you, or the owner gives you permission. A photo you found online is protected by copyright the moment it is taken, with no notice or registration needed, so finding it gives you no right to put it on your website. Use your own photos, a business-use license or written permission.
If you did not take the photo or license it, do not put it on your site
If you found a photo online, through an image search, a competitor's site or social media, you can use it on your business website only with its owner's permission or a license that allows it. Assume someone owns it. The U.S. Copyright Office says copyright protection "exists automatically from the moment the original work of authorship is fixed," and a photo is fixed the moment it is taken. Nobody has to register it or label it for it to be protected.
There are three safe sources. Photos you or your staff took of your own work. Photos licensed for business use, from a stock library or under a license whose terms you have read. Photos the owner has given you written permission to use. Everything else is a risk, and the risk is not small: a photographer who registered a photo can ask a court for an award set by law, without proving any loss, as the statutory damages entry in the glossary explains.
Check a photo before it goes on your site
Find where the photo came from with a reverse image search
If you have a photo and do not know where it came from, search Google with the photo itself. Google's help says Google Lens results can include "websites with the image or a similar image," which often leads to the photographer, the stock library that sells it or the site that first published it.
A photo from a stock library usually shows up on that library's page. If it does, the library's license page tells you what you may do with it. If the search finds only other businesses using the same photo, that is not permission. It usually means several of them are taking the same risk.
- On your computer, go to google.com.
- Click Search by image, then Upload a file, and choose the photo.
- Look through the pages that show the image for the photographer, a stock library or the original publisher.
Search Google Images with the Usage rights filter, then read the license yourself
If you are looking for a new photo, filter the search to images that come with license details. On images.google.com, run a search, click Tools under the search box, then Usage rights, and choose Creative Commons licenses or Commercial or other licenses. Then click an image and open License details.
The filter is a starting point, not a clearance. Google's help says it "filters images by license based on information provided by the sites that host those images," and warns that "images might be subject to copyright." It asks you to confirm the license "for accuracy with both the license's provider and the image's host site" before you reuse anything.
Know what each common license lets a business do
Most free photos come under one of a few licenses, and the letters in a Creative Commons license tell you most of what you need.
CC BY and CC BY-SA.
Business use is allowed. Creative Commons says each "allows for commercial use" as long as "credit must be given" to the creator. SA adds that an edited version has to carry the same license.
Anything with NC.
Not for a business website. NC means "only noncommercial use of your work is permitted," and Creative Commons defines noncommercial as "not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage."
Anything with ND.
You may use it only as it is. Creative Commons says ND allows copies "in unadapted form only," so no cropping into a banner or adding your logo.
A stock library's own license.
Read it before you download, because each library writes its own terms, and what one allows for free another limits or charges for.
Save a copy of the license and the page you got the photo from. If anyone asks later, a screenshot of the license on the day you downloaded the photo is the record that shows you had the right to use it.
Four beliefs that lead businesses to use photos they cannot
Giving credit does not replace permission
If the license does not allow your use, a credit line under the photo does not fix it. Credit is a condition some licenses add on top of permission, not a substitute for it. The Copyright Office's advice when you want to use someone's work is plain: "You can ask for it. If you know who the copyright owner is, you may contact the owner directly."
A photo with no copyright notice is still protected
If a photo has no © symbol, watermark or "all rights reserved," it is protected all the same. Copyright Basics, the Copyright Office's guide, says applying a copyright notice "has not been required since March 1, 1989." Registration is optional too: the Office says "registration is voluntary" and "copyright exists from the moment the work is created."
Being on the internet does not put a photo in the public domain
If you are hoping a photo is free because it is everywhere, check its age, not how widely it is shared. Public domain is about time. The Copyright Office says that for works created since 1978, protection generally "lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years." A photo taken in the last few decades is almost certainly still protected, however many sites have copied it.
Fair use rarely covers a photo used to decorate a business website
If you are counting on fair use, look at the four factors courts weigh, and notice how a business site sits on each. The Copyright Office's fair use guidance says courts are "more likely to find that nonprofit educational and noncommercial uses are fair"; using a whole work makes fair use "less likely"; and courts look at whether a use "is hurting the current market for the original work." Putting someone's whole photo on a page that sells your services is commercial, uses all of it, and takes the place of a license the photographer sells.
Fair use is decided case by case, by a court. The Office says "there is no formula" and that "only a federal court can determine whether a particular use is, in fact, a fair use." Its own advice: "in cases of doubt, the Copyright Office recommends that permission be obtained."
If you are already using a photo you are not sure about
Replace any photo you cannot trace to a license, and keep a record of the rest
If you inherited a website, or a former designer added photos, go through every image and write down where it came from. Keep the ones you took and the ones with a license on file. Replace the rest with your own photos or licensed ones. Photos of your own trucks, crew and finished jobs usually do more for a local business than a stock image anyway, because they show the customer the work they will get.
Ask whoever builds your site to confirm in writing where its images came from. A designer who cannot say which license covers a photo has handed you the risk.
Who owns the photos a photographer or designer made for us?
Usually the person who made them, unless your agreement says otherwise. The Copyright Office's guide to works made for hire says the author is "ordinarily" the person "who actually created the work." A business is the author and owner of work it paid for from the start only when the work was made by its own employee as part of the job, or when it falls into one of the categories the law lists and both sides signed a written agreement calling it a work made for hire. Photos for a website often fit neither, so get a written license or a written transfer of the copyright when you hire someone.
If a demand letter or a claim arrives, take the photo down and do not ignore it
If you receive a letter or email saying you are using someone's photo, remove the photo first, then check which photos it names and whether you hold a license for any of them. A copyright lawyer can tell you whether the amount asked for is reasonable, which depends partly on whether and when the photo was registered.
A claim may come through the Copyright Claims Board rather than a court. It is a small claims forum inside the Copyright Office for disputes "up to $30,000 total," and its use "is voluntary." You can opt out by following the instructions in the notices you receive, and if you do, the owner can still bring the same claim in federal court. The Board warns that neither opting out nor taking part "is a risky course of action as it can lead to a default," which can mean an order to pay.