How do I set the license for images on my site in Google Images?

Question

Google Images has an option to filter images based on license.

Each image on my site has a details page, where I have the following link to denote the license:

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US" target="_blank">CC-BY</a>

It's a modified version of the sample code from Creative Commons - Choose a License.

However, I see images that Google has indexed since I added this code do not appear when I select a license filter.

Answer 1

You need to wrap it around a div with an about attribute. Here's an example that Google provides:

<div about="image.jpg">
  <img src="image.jpg" alt="" />
  <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0</a>
</div>

So in your case:

<div about="image.jpg">
  <img src="image.jpg" alt="" />
  <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en_US" target="_blank">CC-BY</a>
</div>

Sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quyhasVn2jw, http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/08/simple-way-to-specify-image-licenses.html