Without further ado, then, let’s take a look at our first question.  A rather obtuse fellow named Jonathan in New Jersey writes: “Dear Mr. Stock Smarty Pants: Since buyers are already using Google to search for stock images, is there a good strategy to use this technology for direct marketing? And why doesn't Google begin their own stock venture, considering that they already have a good combination of search technology and site visitors? More importantly, should my pants be cuffed or uncuffed?”

Cute little aside about the pants cuffs, Jonathan, though I suspect your pants are probably most often down around your ankles so it doesn’t really matter whether they have cuffs or not.

Anyway…

I say Google…Schmoogle.  Just because Google is the biggest, baddest search engine on the block doesn’t mean that it’s worth squat in terms of looking for stock images.  But I’m getting ahead of myself…let’s first be very clear about a couple of things.  Item one: there is a vast difference

between professional picture buyers (who have neither the time nor patience to sort through piles of crapola when they’re searching for an image) and the great unwashed masses (in other words, the consumer market, which obviously has way too much time on its hands as evidenced by the popularity of such doggie doo as “Dancing With The Stars”).  Item two: to be very simplistic (and, knowing About the Image’s audience, that’s probably a good thing), we can divide professional stock picture buyers into two groups: editorial buyers (for books, magazines, newspapers and textbooks) and commercial buyers (ad agencies, in-house corporate art departments, graphic designers). 

So, let’s connect the dots.  Say I’m an art director at the XYZ corporation, which happens to be a public utility/energy company.  I need a picture of a businessman working at a computer for a bill stuffer (a small print piece included with your exorbitant monthly bill for gas and electric use).  I go to “Google Image Search” and type in “businessman working at computer in office.”  Let’s roll the dice and see what we come up with, shall we? Bingo…we have 170,000 hits and it only took .04 seconds to find them…impressive.  Hmmm, one problem though: I can only see 18 pictures on a page.  Remember that part about commercial art buyers being BUSY? Well, what helps is being able to see more than just 18 stinking images on a page.  So, I click on “preferences”.  Aha…it says I can have as many as 100 on a page…that sounds good! So, I click “apply” and “save” and…I still have 18 on the screen.  Fine, I’ll just exit my browser to clear things out and start over.  Same thing: 170,000 images, visible 18 at a time.  Clearly, that’s not helpful, but let’s move on.

The very first image’s thumbnail is so dark that’s its content is completely incomprehensible.  Turns out it’s paired with the second image on my returns page, they’re both from iStockphoto and they’re both…stills from a video clip.  Hmmmm again…did I say I wanted video? NO! 

The next 9 returns are from a variety of royalty free sources (Comstock, Jupiterimages, etc.) and they aren’t too bad.  Then it starts to get a little weird: there are some illustrations (I want a PHOTO), a cartoon (A PHOTO!!!), and the real capper: an image from the website of the Guyana Government Information Agency Office of some bureaucratic flunky taking delivery of 31 office chairs…nice!

Now I’m thinking, “Hey, smart guy, maybe it’s your fault…maybe you need to change the search wording.”  Fair enough…after all, garbage in, garbage out, right? So next I typed in “stock photo businessman working at computer in office”…I mean, how much more specific can you get, right? Up come 18 images once again, not the 100 I’d selected in “preferences”, and there are the same two video stills, plus seven images that more or less conform to my search request, plus three shots of business WOMEN at computers (does Google have a gender recognition problem?), plus five illustrations (remember, I had now added the word “photo” to my search!) and, just for good measure, a photo of some freak with a ponytail putting golf balls in his office!

OK, are you starting to get the picture here? Due to all the cancellations and delays in air travel, it’s become popular to say, “If you have time to spare, go by air.”  The same might be said of searching for stock images on Schmoogle…I mean, Google.  It can be an intriguing adventure, but not when you’re serious about finding professional stock images, you’re up against a deadline and you want images that come at least reasonably close to your search words.  What you don’t want to do is sort through a slew of images put up by amateurs and cell phone snappers (sounds a bit like microstock, doesn’t it?), or whose relevance to your search is questionable at best.

Having said that, doing a Google image search may be helpful to those editorial picture buyers I mentioned earlier.  Why? Because they often need to cast a wide net in order to source images for their projects.  Unlike commercial buyers, editorial researchers need the kind of depth that today’s picture libraries often lack.  So, using a search engine like Google may connect them with image sources that fly under the radar.

What does all this mean for photographers, anywho? Bottom line is that Google is a fun little tool for picture buyers to play with, but in the end it’s not going to be the primary vehicle that the commercial pros use for finding images to purchase.  That doesn’t mean you should ignore Google: it’s generally better to come up in a search rather than not be seen at all.  This assumes, of course, that you have a website with your images on it and, if that’s the case, then you’ll want to optimize your position in the search engines to the greatest degree practical (and there are tons of articles and books out there with information on how to attain search optimization).  But, if I’m a photographer producing commercial stock images, I’m sure not going to depend on Google to make me rich.  You’re still probably going to want to have some images distributed through something that looks a bit like a “traditional;” stock library, you’re still going to want to employ the services of an online distributor along the lines of an Alamy or a myLoupe, and you’re going to want to take a serious look at selling directly as well.  In the latter case, having a search engine direct customers to your website can certainly be useful.

As for your second question, why the heck would Google even want to bother with the stock picture industry? You’re talking about a company with 2007 revenue that will probably end up being in excess of $14 BILLION and a stock price that’s well over $700 per share! In comparison, the entire global stock picture marketplace is only a $2 billion industry.  If Google launched its own “stock venture,” as you called it, what’s the best they could hope for? The big gorilla is Getty Images with perhaps 40% of the worldwide market, or about $700-800 million in total revenue, and a measly stock price that’s barely north of thirty bucks a share.  That’s just small potatoes to somebody like Google.  So, I think in the end they’re probably a lot smarter to simply tag along and watch, selling advertising wherever they can, rather than take on the overhead and headaches of a “real” stock picture library.    

So, there you go, Jonathan in New Jersey…I hope this answers your question but, if not, too bad…I get paid anyway.

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Mr. Stock Smarty Pants, known throughout the stock picture industry as the eccentric genius who has allegedly been instrumental in the rise (and perhaps fall) of several major stock picture libraries, appears every other Monday on About The Image.  Although MSSP is constantly moving around the globe due to his (again, alleged) ties to both the international intelligence community and organized crime, if you have a question about anything concerning the stock photo business, e-mail it to and, so long as Mr. Stock Smarty Pants manages to avoid incarceration, we’ll make every effort to get your question to him for a response in an upcoming edition of About The Image.   Oh, and MSSP wants to take this opportunity to categorically deny any affiliation whatsoever with Stock Answers™ LLC.