Nuts and Bolts: Watermarking
May 6, 2016
Nuts & Bolts – Watermarking
GCU has received notice from Google that any products we feed them with watermarks will be removed from their Google Shopping feed. This has proven to be a valuable source of traffic and sales for GCU and GCU artists. This means if your cards are watermarked they will no longer be included in Google Shopping. GCU is considering removing the watermark option from the site altogether – offering only non-watermarked cards – to maximize exposure for cards and artists.
GCU’s traffic to sales conversions are higher for non-watermarked cards since it is a more pleasant shopping experience. Evidence of higher conversions, the majority of our top selling artist do NOT have any of their images watermarked. Additionally, shoppers occasionally ask about the watermark as they’re concerned that it will be printed on the card.
An interesting article on photo watermarking which mostly applies here:
TIP: Consider setting your Copyright Watermark settings to OFF for both Large and Medium images which is found in Global Preferences. This will effect NEW cards, not existing cards. At this time GCU is NOT updating existing card images to remove watermarks on a request by request basis. This is something we are looking at taking on as a site-wide undertaking.
NOTE: Stock Card Creations (BigStock) will retain the image watermarking and are not impacted by settings in Global Preferences, per GCU’s licensing agreement with BigStock.
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GCU Community 
Hi Doreen, a long time ago you stated watermarks didn’t sell well and I took your advise and have been removing my marks one card at a time but with the large amount of cards I have I still have several thousand to go. I’m hoping GCU will get to the point where they can remove them. 🙂 BTW thank you so much for giving your opinion on watermarks, my sales have increased on the ones without marks. Take care, Laurie