Do the search engines penalise you for images being WATERMARKED?

[KevinDunne]

Our site contains a library of thousands of images which we are thinking of watermarking.  Does anyone know if Google penalise sites for this or is it best practice in order to protect revenues?

As watermarking these images makes them less shareable (but protects revenues) i was thinking Google might then penalise us - which might affect traffic

Any ideas?

[GregFindley.co.uk]

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/pros-and-cons-of-watermarked-images.html

"Will Google rank an image differently just because it's watermarked?
Peter: Nope. The presence of a watermark doesn't itself cause an image to be ranked higher or lower."

[KevinDunne]

Thanks Russ, v helpful

[symbolphoto]

Nope, if they did, i'd be in big trouble.

[HiveDigitalInc]

I am fairly certain Google does not penalize sites for watermarking images. However, losing shares of those images could potentially lose rankings.

One opportunity would be to include a section of your images free of charge with a link attribution policy. This would get you a nice link (don't manipulate the alt text, just the name of the image or your service)

Also, have you checked to see how often your images are being stolen? You can use a service like tineye.com to do this.