Re: Am I missing something?
But if they put up the low resolution file, they'll end up low on the search ranking and may be excluded based on size, because there's no way for a website to give the bot a low res file to link and say "I have these other resolutions as well".
Additionally, any significant watermark is going to screw up reverse image search, so you can't show those to the bot either.
Worst part is all the cases where a website purports to have a picture, the view image link sends you right to it but the link to the page it should be on doesn't have it, where it will now be impossible to find the picture you're looking for.
