John Mueller from Google said he does not believe that an image that is licensed and copyrighted would rank better in search because it has a copyright label on it. Google does have that newish license metadata but all that does it let you show a licensable badge on your images in image search.
But having that markup on your images or placing a copyright line next to your images should not help your images rank higher in Google Image Search.
John did not say it is NOT a ranking factor but he did say "not that I'm aware of -- I don't think that would make the results any more or less relevant for users."
Here are those tweets:
Not that I'm aware of -- I don't think that would make the results any more or less relevant for users.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) August 6, 2020
Google's John Mueller did say it is useful and worthwhile to have unique images but also said using stock photos won't hurt your web rankings, the image just probably won't show up in image search.
But again, having an image copyrighted, probably won't be a direct signal to Google's ranking algorithm.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
