Keeping licensing rights is always important when searching for images online, and whilst this has long been possible with Google’s Image Search feature, an update to the search has just made it far easier.

Since 2009, Google users have had the option to filter their image search results by their licensing rights, but it was always buried somewhere within the search engine’s advanced search settings. Copyright-conscious Google users can now take it a little easier thanks to the addition of a licensing filter embedded in the engine’s main search options.

The change comes thanks to a request made by Creative Commons founding member and law professor Lawrence Lessig, making it far easier to find images which are free for anyone to use. It is worth noting that Bing has had a similar feature in place since last July.

For anyone in search of a fairly-used (and legal) image for blog posts, memes or any number of other uses, Google’s search options now allow users to filter out images marked for commercial reuse, private modification, or commercial modification.