Have you ever found a beautiful landscape photo that took your breath away and you wanted to know where it was taken? How about a picture of a celebrity doing something you know for sure they had never done? Or an unbelievable picture of a lawnmower flying in the air? Well, you are in luck. There’s a convenient and easy-to-use bunch of tools out there called Reverse Image Search that can quickly analyze an image and identify it among the billions of images on the web.
What is Reverse Image Search?
Reverse Image Search is where you feed a computer an image and it will inspect it to see if it can cross-reference with a database of images to find the closest match. It is a step up from searching purely with keywords since you would only need one piece of input instead of multiple strings of text.
The most well-known use of Reverse Image Search is the feature in Google Images. Google Search Help’s reverse image search documentation tells us that you can look up an image to find out what it is or what kinds of things are in it, which website it came from, or even what other kinds of images look like it.
How To Use Reverse Image Search on Google
Searching an image using Google is easy, by uploading an image or object into the reverse image search, you can look up results with the aforementioned object in the image, images that are similar to the one you uploaded, or websites that use the image or a similar image.
Google’s reverse image search is compatible with most browsers, such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. The process is fairly simple, and there are three different ways to search for an image.
Uploading a Picture or Using the image URL for Reverse Search
- Go to Google Images and click on the camera icon to “Search by image”
- Choose to copy and paste the image’s url or to “upload an image”
- Upload the image that you want to search from your computer or search the image url
- Click Open or Choose
Alternative Method to Reverse Image Searching with the URL
There is a different method if you have a Chrome browser. With the Chrome browser, go to the website containing the picture you want to look up, right-click the picture, and click “Search Google for an image.” The results for this image will open up in a new tab.
Dragging and Dropping a Picture for Reverse Search
- Similar to the first method, go to Google Images
- On your computer, find the image you want to look up.
- Click on the image and hold down the mouse key. While holding down the mouse key, drag the picture over to the search box and then let go of the mouse key once the image is over the search box
How To Use Reverse Image Search on Browsers Other Than Google
This feature is available to use on popular web browsers other than Google such as, Mozilla Firefox, or Apple Safari. Luckily the process for reverse image searching is almost the same regardless of which web browser you decide to use.
- First, open your browser of choice.
- Next, navigate to the Google Images website.
- Find, choose, and upload the image you want to reverse search with. You can do this by manually opening up a dialogue box that can navigate your computer’s directories or dragging and dropping in an image by clicking on the image you want to look up and, while holding down the left mouse button, dragging the cursor over to the specified drop area on Google Images. In this case, the drop area should be the Google search bar.
- Depending on your internet connection’s overall speeds and the status of your internet service, wait until you get back a possible match for your images as well as additional matches should the first presented match be wrong.
Image Search on Mobile
It’s less hassle than searching for photos on a computer. People are looking for similar products online by taking images of products through their phones, checking prices/stock availability, and looking for recipes to cook with. Just open your browser and head to the reverse image search. Tap on the ‘upload’ icon in the tool or upload the photo by specifying the URL. To get the URL, you can switch tabs after opening the image individually in a window until you’re given the option to save the image, or you can save via tap and hold. Once you have uploaded the snap, all you need to do is tap on ‘Find similar images’ and then wait for the results.
Google Mobile Reverse Image Search
Keep in mind during Google Image Search mentioned above, that the camera icon is not visible if you are on a mobile device.
To get this icon, you need to load the desktop version of the site to your mobile device. Don’t worry, it’s super simple! All you have to do is navigate to the bottom and press the three-dot menu and click ‘Request Desktop Site’.
Voila, you have just opened the desktop version and you can do a reverse image search by clicking the camera icon. If you have older mobile devices, your browser may also support reverse image search.
You can test if you have this functionality by holding down on an image you want to reverse search. If a pop-up menu pops up with functionality that says “Search on Google”, then you can just use this shortcut for reverse image search. Newer iPhones have this functionality removed, and from our tests, we found that it can only be done on Chrome web browsers.
Either way, you will see the results of a reverse image search. There are also options to narrow down the results, such as searching for animated GIFs or clipart equivalents or searching by the color scheme used in the initial image
Android: Reverse Image Search on Mobile
To search for an image on your Android phone using Google’s reverse image search, you’ll need to.
- Use your Android phone to open up the Google app
- Tap “Discover” near the bottom of the app and tap Google Lens once the search bar open up
Using your phone, there are two separate methods of searching for an image. You can opt to take a photo using your phone or you can upload an existing image that you already have on your phone.
If you only want to search for a part of the area within your search, tap the “use an object in the image” button which will allow you to select an object in your file or folder. Alternatively, you can tap the “use part of an image” to select an image area to look up instead. After entering all of this information, scroll down to find your search results.
Alternatives to Google Images
You can use Google or there are many alternatives.
Yandex
Yandex is the leading search engine in Russia (based on market share) and, thanks to recent legal changes (Google lost several lawsuits in Russian courts), is also making great strides in mobile, accounting for the majority of market share.
Yandex isn’t just a search engine, it offers a browser (YaBrowser), email, news, maps, paid advertising, and translator services to the Russian market, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Turkey. All of these features are great, but reverse image search is one of the most effective services on the market. Yandex reverse image utilizes different tools than American-based reverse search engines do and as a result can often look up things that traditional reverse image searches struggle with, such as landscapes or facial recognition. We’ll find out later why this is true.
Yandex may be more difficult to use than other North-American based reverse search engines – if you’re given the Russian interface, then look for the Выберите файл (Choose file) or Введите адрес картинки (Enter image address) buttons to use your preferred method of searching. Найти (Search) will allow you to look up your image after submitting it.
Following up on your search, you can use Похожие картинки (Similar images), and Ещё похожие (More similar) to tighten up your search.
Yandex’s key strength is facial recognition. Yandex will search up any photographs containing a face that’s similar to the one you look up; not only that, but the system will adjust its algorithm based on the lighting, background, and positions of images that it compares it to. Other search engines like TinEye and Google may look for photos of persons with similar clothing and general facial features, but Yandex will search for those photos in addition to photographs containing a facial match.
Yandex is based in Moscow, Russia, and is an entirely Russian service – thus some people have some concerns that these ties to Moscow will compromise their data in some way. This is certainly a distinct possibility, though not a definite one. Regardless, we advise you to use Yandex at your own risk.
TinEye
TinEye was the original pioneer of reverse image searching technology. TinEye is a reverse image search engine that helps you search for the source of an image and find where it appears on the web. The tool allows you to search by both URL and uploaded images. Simply click on the arrow icon in front of the search box and upload an image from your computer to find where it appears online. By uploading an image or searching through the image’s URL (or even dragging and dropping the contents into the search), TinEye will crawl throughout the web to look for images that are similar to your submission. TinEye’s index is over 44.8 billion images.
An advantage to using TinEye is that the image you submit will never be indexed or saved by TinEye’s server. Searching with TinEye will guarantee the safety and privacy of whatever image you search up.
One other noteworthy feature of TinEye is that it features a browser extension. By downloading the extension through the Firefox, Chrome, or Opera browser, you can skip many of the steps required to search up an image and simply right-click an image you find on your browser to immediately send it to TinEye’s query
The final and possibly most important technology that TinEye has is called “TinEye Alerts.” TinEye Alerts tracks images that you want it to and constantly scans the web daily to show you exactly where these images have appeared in the last 24 hours. TinEye can find these images even if they’ve been slightly modified and gives you a daily report so you can take a look to see how your images are currently being used. There is no functional limit to how many images you upload to TinEye. This feature is especially useful for artists, who often have their work uploaded online without their permission and TinEye gives them a tool to identify these and fight back.
TinEye Alert is also used by major companies such as Philips, The Home Depot, Vodafone, and many more.
DupliChecker
With billions and billions of photos on the web, it can be difficult to find exactly the image you are looking for, the source (photo match), and accompanying information in all of them. It can also be difficult to resize the images you already have, crop the thumbnails, or find other websites that use the same photos. But this is where “reverse image search” can help: to use DupliChecker’s image search on iPhone or Android, you simply upload an image from your phone or computer device, but another way is to paste the URL of the image into the space provided and The idea is to attach (please enter the URL). Now DupliChecker brings you more ease to find images in a keyword search by reverse image search.
Reverse image search can be done on smartphones as well as on desktop computers. Today, sites are becoming more friendly towards mobile users, which is why people can put these online tools to use anytime and anywhere.
Browser Extensions for Reverse Image search
If the methods above aren’t working for you here are a couple extensions for Reverse image Search.
Reverse Image Search Chrome Extension
Reverse Image Search is a Google Chrome extension that allows you to screenshot a web page and select a portion of it for reverse image search. This is useful if you have multiple images combined and you want to do a reverse image search of only part of the combined image. Additionally, you can reverse image search a video by pausing the video, taking a screenshot, and then reverse image searching the screenshot.
Reverse Image Search Extension on Firefox
Firefox also offers a reverse image extension. It boasts that, “Adds an option to the context menu to search with an image on Google, Bing, Yandex, TinEye, SauceNAO, IQDB or custom search engines. You can also choose more than one and they will be shown in a submenu!”. The multi results feature may be a good option for the serious image searcher.
Is Reverse Image Search Accurate?
It is important to note that Reverse Image Search is not a perfect technology. Multiple factors can influence the accuracy of your search results when looking up an image.
Image File Quality
An image’s quality is an overlooked but important factor in how well Reverse Image Search can recognize it. Let us think of an analogy. Say you were blindfolded in an experiment and asked to identify an object placed in your mouth by chewing and tasting it. Considering that the human mind relies heavily on its visual capabilities to recognize the taste, it makes no sense for you to be immediately able to recognize a random piece of food if it even is food, placed into your mouth.
Likewise, how can we expect a computer, something regularly compared to the human brain in terms of its capabilities and abilities, to fare any better in similar conditions to the blind taste experiment analogy? If you can barely make out an image, what makes you think a computer is likely to do any better in determining what that image is, or even what is in it?
Image Recognition Accuracy
Reverse Image Search services need to train their computers to recognize objects. Sometimes this hampers reverse image search for things that are not in everyday use. However, that is not always the case. Sometimes a complex or currently unrecognizable image that is shared widely across the web that can be picked up by reverse image search. Other times there may be a well-known location that photographers flock to and take similar photos of to upload on their online profiles on photo-sharing social media sites that can be picked up as well. The more samples a database has, the more times it can practice recognizing those samples.
Tips to Make Your Reverse Image Search Accurate
To ensure your reverse image searches are as accurate as possible, make sure to keep these brief tips in mind when you are submitting an image for reverse search:
- A common indicator of file size is an image’s dimensions in pixels. Try to ensure your image’s dimensions are at least 200 pixels wide and 200 pixels long.
- In rare instances, an image can be the right size but still be too unrecognizable even for Reverse Image Search. If you’re working in an image editing tool such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint.NET double-check to see if your image compression settings are too high upon exporting your image.
- If all else fails, nothing beats opening up the image on your computer yourself and seeing with your own eyes how its quality is.
Why You Should Reverse Image Search
Using reverse image search is easy and free, whether you use TinEye – the trailblazer program that innovated the field – or Google Image Search, or the various other tools available on the web. Both TinEye and Google Image have browser extensions that allow the process to be streamlined even more efficiently, allowing any user to search an image as easily as right-clicking the online image and sending the search request through. Other services such as Image Raider can be considered a meta-service, where the program will search the image not only on Google but also Bing and Yandex in addition to upwards of 20 images per search; though this is a bit overkill. For the majority of your needs, a simple Google or TinEye search will serve you just fine.
So why exactly do you need a reverse image? Well, there are several reasons to do some, among them are:
Tracking Image Use
If you have any sort of online presence, whether it’s a website, or you post copyrighted photos online, it’s easy to assume that your images will be, in some form, used by someone else. The reverse image allows you to see exactly when and where these images were used, allowing the user to determine whether or not the reuse is legitimate.
Malicious use aside, reverse searching also allows you to see how much traction your press releases or blog posts got. There is even the added benefit of uncovering any foreign coverage of your content, something that a typical engine search would likely not find.
If you find copyrighted photos that you did not allow for re-use, using reverse image allows you to find this infraction and allows you to take the appropriate action necessary.
Regardless of your purpose or intentions, the reverse image allows you to scour the web for your images or content in ways that traditional searches simply cannot.
Authenticating Images
With photo altering technology on the rise, you can never be sure if an image is real or if it’s fake. Photoshop antics aside, information such as how old the picture it, where it came from, or other details surrounding it often aren’t sources or stated in the initial source you find them.
There are countless examples where a quick reverse image search has allowed someone to avoid these classic pitfalls with images they find online. Sometimes images are misattributed – a black and white photo is attributed to one event, but depicts an entirely different one. This is much more common with images posted on social media, where misinformation is ripe, but sometimes even news stories get the captions wrong.
Perhaps an image looks too odd to be true? If an image has been doctored, reverse image search usually brings up dozens of images that either look similar or sources from satirical or image-tampering sites.
Now reverse image search is a critical step for any serious publication, including and especially news organizations – and given how quick and simple it is, there seems to be no reason not to do so.
Verifying Identity Using Reverse Image Search
Reverse image search doesn’t just work for verifying images, it also works for verifying people – especially on social media. For example, a quick reverse image search on a person who cold messages you on LinkedIn could reveal that instead of being a hiring manager interesting in your skills, it could easily be a hacker phishing for your account information.
Often, searching a seemingly innocuous person’s profile picture online reveals that these are scammers, using the picture of a model or actor to seem more legitimate. When a quick reverse image search could save you from getting scammed, there’s no good reason not to use it
No matter what you are using revers image search for there are plenty of options to find the information you are looking for. Best of luck, happy image searching!
