I wouldn't take the images straight from google, I take them in to photoshop and use the layouts as reference for my content.
So for example if I really liked the placement of some circles in a thumbnail. I would put that in as my background layer, copy the circles layout and then start to add the other bits in I want, like a logo, images etc. I then adjust all of the elements until the layout works.
The templates are a great place to start and get inspiration from, there are free to use templates if you are worried about copyright. You can also buy some that are quite cheap and they come as editable psd's.
Hope that clears up my miss information.