We had a customer who was active in the interior design business. His website had a long page that contained many free images of some interior design projects that he had copied from Google Images result.
One day when his business was booming he decided to replace those images with real images of real projects he had done.
On that day, that page was link 5 on the first page in SERP for a specific search.
As soon as we changed images that page dropped to page 8 (link 85 and more).
How is that possible?
My question is, does Google neglect years of page's credibility for one simple change? If so, can you guide me to an official Google announcement?
