In a landmark move, Getty Images announced its plans to acquire Shutterstock (disclosure: I previously worked as product SEO for the company), uniting two titans of the stock photography and creative assets industry.
In SEO, this merger also sets the stage for new dynamics in content creation, monetization, and the increasingly complex world of licensable media.
Licensable image and video content is a unique market where SEO plays a crucial role in connecting users with creative assets.
Just a few years ago, organic space for licensable images was dominated by giants like Unsplash and Shutterstock, with many small competitors lagging far behind.
However, the dynamic shifted with Google’s Site Diversity update in 2019.
Emerging players saw explosive growth, making the organic space far more crowded and competitive.
In the meantime, more established companies pursued business acquisitions to neutralize or absorb competition.
Fast-forward to today and a small handful of players dominate the organic market through diverse portfolios of stock photos, videos, and creative assets websites, relying on a mix of SEO strategies to grow and mitigate risk.
To understand this space, let’s explore the key players and their strategies to maintain dominance in organic search.
Getty Images
Getty has built its empire on diversification and premium content.
Through iStock, its mid-tier site, Getty offers a more affordable option for stock imagery, while Unsplash provides free-to-use images for a broader audience.
Getty Images itself targets high-end, exclusive content for corporate clients and media outlets, with a strong emphasis on regional exposure through several local brands and dedicated country TLD websites.
Shutterstock
Shutterstock’s strategy has been marked by an aggressive acquisition spree. Recent additions include:
Pond5 (video and audio).
Envato (templates, design assets).
TurboSquid (3D models).
Picmonkey.
Giphy.
Despite the SEO opportunities of its extensive portfolio, Shutterstock has not fully capitalized on these acquisitions to the extent it could.
With Getty at the helm, there is an opportunity to consolidate and optimize these assets to extend joint organic growth potential.
Other notable players
Additional competitors in the space include:
Freepik: Specializes in free and premium vectors, illustrations, and templates, primarily targeting designers; owns several local brands, especially in Latin America and Europe. Leans heavily into AI-generated content for SEO.
Pexels and Pixabay (owned by Canva): Provide free-to-use stock photography and videos, appealing to casual users and professionals alike.
Adobe Stock: Integrated with Adobe’s suite of design tools, catering to professional creators.
Alamy, Dreamstime, DepositPhotos, 123RF: Smaller, more niche platforms offering royalty-free stock content.
Dig deeper: Visual content and SEO: How to use images and videos
While these players dominate the licensable media space, their success relies heavily on effective SEO strategies that cater to a wide range of user intents.
1. Free content
Platforms like Unsplash, Pexels, Freepik, Pixabay, and several others rely on offering free content and/or some form of freemium models, which help build an impressive backlink ecosystem through free content sharing.
At one point, nearly two-thirds of the more prominent players in the organic licensable images space offered at least some free, mid- to high-resolution images that could be easily downloaded without sign-up, registration, or licensing.
2. Indexed search results
Companies like Shutterstock, Unsplash, Pixabay and many other marketplaces rely on indexing internal search pages.
Platforms that index search results often focus on broad and long-tail keywords to capture traffic from various search terms determined by user demand.
With adequate management and careful curation, this can be a winning strategy providing a competitive edge.
3. AI-generated content
Platforms like Freepik have increasingly turned to AI-generated content to expand their libraries and target high-volume search terms.
By creating thousands of variations of popular images, such as “cute dog photos,” and aggressively indexing them, Freepik and similar platforms aim to capture traffic for general and long-tail queries.
While this approach can generate significant SEO traffic, it also contributes to content saturation in Google Image Search, where users encounter repetitive, near-duplicate results from competing platforms.
4. Localization
Localization is crucial for international SEO growth, allowing platforms to dominate in specific regions.
Getty, Shutterstock, and Freepik all employ powerful localization strategies to compete more effectively in organic search.
By employing country-specific TLDs (e.g., gettyimages.co.uk), Getty ensures its content is tailored for local searchers, enhancing its SEO performance in individual countries.
Shutterstock boasts impressive regional and linguistic localization within the core shuttertock.com experience, while Freepik wins through several regional brands.
Dig deeper: How to create images and visuals with generative AI
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The SEO strategies, monetization models, and business practices of image marketplaces have created a problematic landscape for licensable image content.
A significant portion of images indexed in Google – especially free images – are not exclusive to one platform but are available across dozens of competitor sites.
This lack of exclusivity has diluted the value of individual libraries and intensified competition.
As overlapping content libraries made differentiation harder, platforms began prioritizing the visibility of indexable images.
This led to the gradual erosion of watermarking practices, with watermarks becoming less prominent or disappearing altogether.
While this may be a boon for users unconcerned with indemnity or licensing, it represents a serious challenge for platforms relying on content monetization.
It’s an even greater disadvantage for contributing photographers whose works are increasingly devalued.
To compensate, some platforms have supplemented revenue with on-page advertising and/or enabled the unrestricted indexation of search pages.
This includes intentional indexing of pages that target the full spectrum of adult, explicit, or even illicit queries.
For some major players, a substantial portion of organic traffic comes from these dubious “low commercial intent” queries that yield little to no direct conversions.
This traffic is monetized through ads or presented to stakeholders as evidence of SEO-driven growth and framed as a leading indicator of business success.
This system of overlapping content, low-intent traffic, and questionable monetization models:
Undermines platform value.
Erodes trust among users.
Devalues the contributions of photographers and creators.
As platforms prioritize short-term traffic gains, the broader ecosystem risks stagnation and diminished quality.
What the merger could mean for SEO
The combined entity of Getty and Shutterstock has immense untapped potential for organic search for licensable media. Here’s how it could reshape the space:
Streamlining content
The merger offers a chance to remove duplicate content from Getty and Shutterstock’s overlapping libraries.
This will improve Google Image Search quality and boost rankings through streamlined consolidation.
Bringing undiscovered content to light
Getty can fully leverage all acquisitions, such as Envato, Pond5, TurboSquid, and others, by integrating them into a unified multi-brand SEO strategy.
While content duplication across stock media is massive, well over two-thirds of individual media assets never get seen by real users or earn any income for their creators.
Onsite discoverability of assets is poor, and much of Google Image Search is littered with the same old stale imagery.
Investing in onsite search and SEO for underrepresented brands could help:
Bring visibility to vast libraries of undiscovered content.
Expand into specialized markets outside licensable photos, video, and editorial.
Improve the image search experience for the rest of us.
Streamlining libraries and highlighting fresh, underused content can greatly improve the Google Image Search experience, making discovery more meaningful and efficient for users.
Adapting to an uncertain future
The Getty-Shutterstock merger reflects a strategic response to an unpredictable digital landscape.
With frequent Google algorithm updates, AI-generated content flooding the market, and ongoing advancements in AI, content platforms face significant challenges.
This merger offers a chance to adapt, allowing both companies to consolidate assets, refine strategies, and tackle the evolving market.
If successful, they could dominate the licensable content space, reshape organic search, and set new standards for success.
Dig deeper: Advanced image SEO: A secret manual
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