Do Contractor Websites Use Stock Photos? We Traced the Photos on 1,816 Home Pages. At Least 1 in 7 Do, and Some Rivals Share the Same Shot.

Almost every contractor website has the same few pictures: a smiling technician, a big house at dusk, a pair of hands holding a tool. Some of them are the company's own. Plenty came from a stock photo library. And a homeowner comparing three contractors can sometimes find the same picture twice.

We wanted numbers instead of opinions. On October 26, 2026, we opened 2,000 contractor websites from Google's business listings in 14 cities across the US and Canada, downloaded the biggest photos on each home page and traced where they came from.

At least 254 of 1,816 contractor home pages (14.0 percent, about 1 in 7) show a photo we could prove came from a stock library or also appears on an unrelated company's website. In 3 of our 112 searches, two businesses listed in the same results showed the same photo.

That number is a floor, and the method below explains why. It's also not a reason to panic. Google has said stock photos don't hurt your rankings. The cost is somewhere else.

How We Traced 11,365 Photos, and Why Every Number Here Is a Floor

We ran 112 Google business searches: plumber, HVAC company, electrician, garage door repair, pest control, roofing contractor, house painter and landscaping company, in Houston, Phoenix, Atlanta, Denver, Charlotte, Tampa, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Halifax. That gave us 2,227 business profiles and 2,000 different websites.

We opened each home page once in a headless browser, the way a visitor's phone or laptop would, scrolled to the bottom so every picture loaded, and blocked the analytics tags so our visit never showed up in anyone's Google Analytics. 1,881 sites opened properly. 77 showed a bot check, which we logged and did not try to get past. 33 didn't load, 6 listed a Facebook page or similar instead of a website, and 3 were parked domains.

On each page we kept the 10 biggest pictures on the screen and dropped logos, icons and flat graphics. 1,816 home pages had at least one full-color, photo-sized picture, 11,365 in all. Then we looked for two kinds of proof:

• A stock library's file name or folder. Files named like “shutterstock_123456789.jpg” or “AdobeStock_123456.jpeg”, or served from a website builder's built-in photo library, such as GoDaddy's stock and Getty folders. We read all 196 matches by hand and found no false ones.
• The same photo on another company's site. We gave every photo a fingerprint that survives resizing and compression, then compared every photo with every other one. Every match got checked by eye. We threw out 18 groups that weren't photos at all (maps, badges, banners) and 34 where the sites belong to one company, what looks like one owner group, or one franchise brand sharing its own pictures. 5 more are a special case we cover below. That left 47 photos on the websites of 85 businesses with no ownership link we could find.

What this can't tell you:

• Every share is a floor. A stock photo saved under a new file name, and used by none of the other 1,816 sites, is invisible to us. A reverse image search across the whole web would find more.
• Nothing here is about licenses. A stock file name means a photo came from a library. It doesn't mean the business didn't pay for it. We don't say any business is using a photo without permission.
• Home pages only, one day. We didn't open service pages or galleries further in.
• We left one builder's library out. Wix's own photo files have a pattern we couldn't confirm, so about 15 Wix sites that probably use its library aren't counted.

We haven't named any business.

At Least 1 in 7 Contractor Home Pages Show a Stock Photo We Could Prove

Here's what the 1,816 home pages with photos show:

What we could prove	Home pages	Share
A photo whose file name or folder comes from a stock library	196	10.8%
A photo that's also on an unrelated company's website	85	4.7%
At least one of the two	254	14.0%
The main photo on the first screen is provably stock	79 of 1,562	5.1%

The libraries behind the file names, by number of websites: Unsplash 54, Adobe Stock 36, Pexels 29, iStock 27, GoDaddy's built-in library 23, Shutterstock 23, Getty Images 21, Depositphotos 11, Pixabay 5 and Bigstock 3. Unsplash, a free library, is the single most common source. Counted by site, the paid libraries show up on 110 websites and the free ones (Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay) on 80.

The biggest photo on the first screen, the one a visitor sees before they scroll, is provably stock on only 79 of the 1,562 home pages that have one (5.1 percent). On the other 175 sites with proven stock, it sits lower down: the service tiles, the “why choose us” strip, a background behind the reviews. That's where a lot of stock lives. It fills a gap the owner never got around to photographing.

The Same Photo on Rival Websites, Sometimes in the Same Google Search

47 photos showed up on the websites of 85 unrelated businesses. 44 of them were on two sites, 2 on three and 1 on four. 22 of the 47 crossed the border, with a copy on a US contractor's site and another on a Canadian one. Most of the time, that doesn't matter. A homeowner in Phoenix will never see the site of a roofer in Calgary.

But some pairs sit side by side in the same search:

• Two Calgary roofers, one house. In our search for a roofing contractor in Calgary, the businesses listed 19th and 20th use the same free stock photo of a house as the main picture on their home page. A pest control company in Phoenix uses it too.
• Two Edmonton electricians, one electrician. In our search for an electrician in Edmonton, the 3rd and 8th results show the same stock photo of a worker on their home pages.
• Two Edmonton painters, five identical project photos. In our search for a house painter in Edmonton, the 7th and 9th results show the same five photos of finished rooms, down to the file names. Three still carry a phone camera's original names from June 1, 2025. One site captions a photo “cabinet refinishing”, and the other calls the same photo “bedroom painting”. The two list different phone numbers and addresses. We can't tell from the outside whether they're connected or who took the pictures. But a homeowner with both sites open would see the same kitchen twice.

Website builders spread the same pictures too. One photo of an electrician from GoDaddy's built-in library is the main image on the home page of an electrician in Seattle, sits further down the home page of one in Phoenix, and a near-identical copy sits in the gallery on the home page of one in Ottawa, captioned “Electrician installing switch”.

We didn't count companies that share their own photos, because that's normal. Franchise locations use the brand's pictures. But it can still look odd to a customer. Six heating companies in five Canadian cities, whose websites run on the same platform and look like one group's brands, show the same photos of “their” technician at work. A homeowner in Winnipeg and another in Halifax meet the same technician.

GoDaddy and Squarespace Sites Use the Most Stock, and Bigger Shops Use a Bit Less

Here's the share of home pages with proven stock, split a few ways. A business that showed up in two trade searches counts in both.

Group	Home pages	Proven stock
Built on GoDaddy	103	31 30.1%
Built on Squarespace	58	15 25.9%
Built on Wix	101	15 14.9%
Built on WordPress	1,064	135 12.7%
Other or custom build	490	58 11.8%
Electricians	233	51 21.9%
Garage door companies	213	37 17.4%
Plumbers	223	31 13.9%
Pest control	203	28 13.8%
Painters	227	29 12.8%
Roofers	247	29 11.7%
HVAC companies	239	26 10.9%
Landscapers	255	25 9.8%
0 to 49 Google reviews	179	30 16.8%
50 to 199 reviews	697	104 14.9%
200 to 999 reviews	647	87 13.4%
1,000 or more reviews	293	33 11.3%
United States	909	133 14.6%
Canada	907	121 13.3%
In the top 3 of at least one search	303	37 12.2%
Never in a top 3	1,513	217 14.3%

The website builder makes the biggest difference. 30.1 percent of GoDaddy sites and 25.9 percent of Squarespace sites show proven stock, against 12.7 percent of WordPress sites. Both builders put a photo library inside the editor, so a stock photo is one click away while you're building. That also makes it easier for us to spot, so part of the gap is our method. Wix has a library too, and it would come out higher if we'd counted the files we left out.

Electricians use the most (21.9 percent) and landscapers the least (9.8 percent). Our guess: a finished garden photographs well, and a panel upgrade doesn't. Busier shops use a little less. Sites of companies with fewer than 50 Google reviews show proven stock 16.8 percent of the time, and companies with 1,000 or more reviews 11.3 percent. Even the biggest names in our searches aren't stock-free.

Rankings barely move it. Businesses in the top 3 of a search show proven stock 12.2 percent of the time, and everyone else 14.3 percent. That fits what Google says.

Do Stock Photos Hurt Your Google Rankings? Google Says No, With One Catch

Google's John Mueller was asked in June 2020 whether stock photos hurt a page's rankings. His answer, as Search Engine Roundtable reported it: “it doesn't matter for web-search directly.”

He went further on Google's Search Off the Record podcast in 2022, which Search Engine Journal wrote up. About a stock image on a page, he said “probably, I don't know, 20, 30 other sites have the same image, and they all have a license for it, and showing it is fine.” The catch is Google Images: “you wouldn't rank for this in Image Search, but it doesn't count against it either.” And for regular search, “that's not going to harm your site.”

So a stock photo won't sink your rankings, and replacing one won't lift them. The cost is attention. In its eye-tracking research, the Nielsen Norman Group found that “Users pay close attention to photos and other images that contain relevant information but ignore fluffy pictures used to 'jazz up' web pages.” And specifically, “users ignore stock photos of generic people”, while photos of a company's real people get looked at.

That study is from 2010, and websites have changed a lot since. The point hasn't. The top of your home page is the most valuable space you have, and a photo a visitor's eyes skip over is wasting it.

A Stock File Name Isn't the Problem. A Missing License Is.

Stock photos are legal to use when you have the right to use them. Paid libraries sell a license, and free ones like Unsplash and Pexels publish their own terms. A file name tells you where a photo came from. It doesn't tell you whether anyone paid, and our check can't see that either.

The trouble starts when nobody can show the license. That happens more than you'd think. A designer grabbed a photo for the mockup and it went live. A nephew built the site in 2019. Or someone copied a picture from another contractor's website, which isn't stock at all, because that photo belongs to whoever took it.

If a rights owner takes it to court, the numbers are set by law:

• United States: for a photo registered in time with the US Copyright Office, the owner can ask for statutory damages of not less than $750 or more than $30,000 per photo, up to $150,000 if the court finds the copying was willful. A court can drop it to $200 for someone who had no reason to know. Without a timely registration, the owner has to prove actual damages instead.
• Canada: for commercial use, not less than $500 and not more than $20,000 per work. A court can lower it to $200 if the business wasn't aware it was infringing.

Plenty of cases start with a letter asking for payment instead, often from a company that searches the web for photos on behalf of their owners. US searches for the names of two of those companies, Pixsy and Copytrack, average about 1,000 and 880 a month.

The fix is boring: find the receipt or the download page for every photo on your site. If your web designer added them, ask for the licenses in writing. If you can't find one, replace that photo. This isn't legal advice.

What to Shoot Instead: 20 Photos That Do a Stock Photo's Job Better

You don't need a photographer to start. A recent phone and one dry morning will cover most of this list:

1. The owner, at a job or beside the truck. Customers want to know who they're hiring.
2. The whole crew, in uniform, in front of the shop or the trucks.
3. Each tech or installer who visits homes, for an “our team” section. Ask first.
4. The office staff who answer the phone.
5. One truck with the name and phone number on the side, parked in a real driveway.
6. The fleet, lined up, if you have more than one.
7. The shop, yard or warehouse, which tells people you're a real local business.
8. The sign on your building.
9. A tech at work on a real job, shirt logo visible, face turned to the work.
10. A tech arriving at a home, shoe covers on, at the front door.
11. Before and after pairs, one for each main service, shot from the same spot.
12. Close-ups of finished work: a clean panel, a tidy flashing detail, a sharp paint line.
13. Work in progress, as long as everyone in the picture is wearing their safety gear.
14. A job in each city you serve, for the city pages, with a street view that locals might recognize and no house number.
15. Your yard sign on a job site.
16. Your gear, the equipment that sets you apart, on the job and not in a catalog shot.
17. Materials you install, on a real house, if you're certified with a brand.
18. A happy customer, only with written permission.
19. Your team at a local event or sponsorship.
20. A wide hero shot: crew, truck and a finished job in one frame, in landscape.

A few rules make them work. Shoot in daylight and in landscape, because a sideways photo crops badly in a wide banner. Ask the homeowner before you photograph their house, and keep house numbers and license plates out of the frame. Name the file for what it shows, like furnace-install-edmonton.jpg, and write alt text that says what's in the picture and where. Alt text is also how a screen reader describes it, which matters for accessibility.

Start with the hero photo, because it's what every visitor sees first. Then replace any stock that claims to be your team or your work. Stock can stay where it's honestly decoration, like a background behind a quote form. And put the same real photos on your Google Business Profile, which is where many customers see you first. Our Google Business Profile management covers the photos there.

If the photos are only the start of what your site needs, look at our website design service, or book a call and we'll go through your home page with you.

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