Google Reverse Image Search

Search by image! Reverse image search extension allows you to search Google by image. Right-click on an image and discover where else it has been used of find it's origin. This tool is powered by Google Image Search. With Reverse Image Search by Google, you can quickly discover visually similar photos from around the web on your mobile phone and iPad. Upload from your Photo.

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If you’ve ever seen the show Catfish then you know all about Google’s reverse image search. What you may not know is that Google isn’t the only reverse image search tool when it comes to finding rogue images online.

There are many reasons to use a Reverse Image Search Engine. Maybe you are a photographer looking to see who has been using your photos without authorization. Maybe you are a graphic designer looking for a larger version of a photograph. Maybe you are interested to see if someone is using your picture from Facebook, Kik, or Instagram. Or, yes, maybe you’re Nev and Max from Catfish.

In digital marketing, sometimes we rely on reverse image search for tracking down unauthorized product images being used by competitors, to which this can lead to a cease and desist. Or, if an unauthorized photo is being used, perhaps you can discuss a citation back to your owned image (resulting in a link). Below are some of the Greenlane team’s favorite image search tools, with the pros and cons of each broken out. So the next time you’re running an image audit for yourself or a client, engaging in an image reclamation link building campaign, looking for a nice image to use for an article – or just trying to figure out who that creepy secret admirer really is – you’ll know which tool to choose.

By the way, this is only for web services, so native apps like Reversee won’t make this list.

TinEye Reverse Image Search and Compare

TinEye was the first website to ever use image identification technology and to this date is still one of the most popular and widely used reverse search engines out there. It’s great for professional photographers or creatives who have worked online and want to see if any of it has been stolen or modified and reused. At the time this article was written, TinEye boasted 14.7 billion indexed images. In case you’re skeptical, TinEye makes its release and updates information publicly available at tineye.com/updates.

Pros: TinEye’s easy to use, just upload or enter an image URL to get started. The free version of the tool allows you to save your previous searches, all you need to do is register an account first. To make it even easier to use, TinEye has Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browser extensions. The free version allows 150 searches per week. If TinEye finds possible image matches, it’s easy to click and visually compare the image to your upload with a nifty switch feature (pictured below).

Cons: TinEye does not recognize the people or objects in an image, it identifies the specific image that was uploaded. Therefore, TinEye will not show “similar” images. There is an upload limit size of 20MB. If you need more than 150 image searches per week or want advanced features, you’ll have to opt for the paid version starting at $200 per year. TinEye doesn’t have the option to search for images by keyword.

Best Uses: For finding copyright and fair use violations of specific images, and to quickly see how and where an image was modified.

Bonus: Are you looking for something of a certain color or to fit a specific color scheme? Try out TinEye Labs’ Multicolor Search Lab for a super-addictive, color search engine featuring more than 20 million Creative Common images from Flickr.

ImageRaider: Set It and Forget About It

ImageRaider is another favorite tool that we use at Greenlane, in a slightly different way. ImageRaider is a credit-based tool that goes a step beyond simply locating images and offers long-term image monitoring. If you’re a professional photographer or rights-holder, ImageRaider makes it easy to keep track all of your past work and current work, as long as you keep your image or photo catalog up to date. As far as use goes, you have a couple of choices: conduct an instant image search or upload a list of images to find.

Pros: Simply put, ImageRaider has set-it-and-forget-it image monitoring down pat. You can set the tool to check for your images at a daily, weekly, monthly or fortnightly frequency. The image monitoring report itself is easy to export and offers pretty granular detail, down to a thumbnail of the image being used and the page and domain that it was last seen on (pictured above). ImageRaider’s a bit more accurate than Google’s reverse image search and the interface is easy to understand, but the biggest pro is that you have a ton of options for imputing your images.

Enter images via URL, direct upload, from XML sitemap(s), directly from Flickr, DevianArt, and 500px. If you’re an artist or photographer who keeps all of your images in one place, like a portfolio page, ImageRaider lets you input the URL of a page and use any images from that page as input for your search!

Cons: Like most good tools this one will cost you, albeit not much depending on how many images you have and/or the frequency with which you plan to monitor them. However, accounts are free to open and if you Tweet about the tool you can get 50-100 free credits to use! The biggest con? ImageRaider can be a bit slow when it comes to processing and delivering search results, so don’t wait until the last minute to get your searches started.

Best Uses: To continuously and automatically monitor professional image portfolios and to check for specific images in bulk.

Bonus: ImageRaider isn’t just for tracking down stolen work, it offers an image search to find royalty-free images, graphics, and pictures by keyword or phrase, too.

Google’s Reverse Image Search

Being the number one search engine makes for one heck of an image search engine, and that’s exactly what Google’s Image search is. Google Images launched in July 2001, initially offering access to 250 million images. Since then the number has grown exponentially and Google touts its Image search as being the “most comprehensive image search on the web.”

All you have to do to use the reverse search function is go online, right-click (in Chrome and Firefox) on an image and select “Search Google for Image.” In a couple of seconds, you’re presented with other sizes of the image that exist online (as far as Google is concerned), a list of sites that include the image, and a list of visually similar images. Another way is to visit images.google.com and enter the image-in-question’s URL in the search bar. If that’s still one too many steps for you, simply drag and drop an image into the search bar.

Pros: Since all you have to do is right-click, paste a URL, or drag and drop to search, Google’s reverse image search takes the cake for easy usability. Reverse image searches work with just a touch on mobile and tablets, too. Oh, and did we mention that it’s free?

Cons: Sometimes the “visually similar,” images aren’t all that similar. Other times, the suggested image results can be so tiny that it’s hard to tell what the picture is without clicking through to the website it’s on and looking. If you’re dealing with a large image audit list these few extra seconds and clicks really add up.

Best Uses: From figuring out who people or celebrities are just from a photo, finding homes that are listed for sale behind paywall sites (without having to pay), looking for “similar” images or products, finding additional sizes and resolutions of an image— Google’s reverse image search is great for just about anything, minus the cons listed above.

To illustrate what I mean about visually similar images, I took a picture of myself and popped it into the Google image search bar. The results were mixed. Google was correct, that picture exists in just one size and nowhere else online, but as for the visually similar images? Justin Bieber hair memes, cute blonde bob haircuts, and Jennifer Aniston…wrong, but I’ll take it!

This comparison piece goes over just three of the big image search tools that exist, there are SO many more out there with more being created each day. Do you have any special image search tips, hacks, or tool suggestions? Share ’em in the comments!

BONUS – PimEyes: Reverse Image Search For Faces

Here’s a new one that was recently brought to my attention. It’s called PimEyes, and its purpose is for finding faces around the internet. As it was described to me, “PimEyes is the company that has created the first facial recognition search engine available not only for companies or public institutions but also for individuals.” PimEyes allows anyone to find if their photos are being used without consent. The tool helps find stolen photos that are being used for catfishing, creating fake dating profiles, or have been published as revenge porn.

Pros: It’s smart. It works very well. I found a few photos of myself that I never knew were online. It also provides many close matches just in case you have a photo in there.

Cons: There is a charge. If you want the location of the file, you need to pay $19.99 a month. But for peace of mind, twenty bucks isn’t bad at all.

Best Uses: To find face pictures you didn’t know were online.

Photos sometimes live double lives on the internet. Scammers might steal your social media photos and use them with fake online identities. Or scammers might target you by using someone else's photos, claiming to be someone they're not. Or a provocateur might paste a picture from a news story into a meme where it's taken out of context.

Google Reverse Image Search Catfish

Use a reverse Google Image search to check if the image in a meme actually comes from a different event altogether.

This phenomenon can be hard to detect without some special skills or tools. That's what a reverse image search is for. This search engine tool gives you the power to spot scams, debunk false news and find out when someone is using your images for their own gain.

You can run a reverse image search in a few different ways, but the end result is a list of websites where the photo or image is displayed, with a link and description. It can also give you a list of related images. Although these results are often hit or miss, they might show you where images of the same thing shot from a different angle are posted.

Here's how to run a reverse image search, and why you might want to consider it.

How to run a reverse image search

There are a few options for how to do a reverse image search. First, open Google Images in your Safari, Firefox or Chrome web browser.

Option 1: Click on the image and hold down. Then drag it to the Google Images search field in another window.

Option 2: Take a screenshot of the image and drag that file into the search field. (You can also upload the file from the Google Images search bar, if you prefer.)

Google Reverse Image Search Desktop

Option 3: Right-click on the image and select Open image in another window. Copy the URL and then paste into the Google Images search field.

Option 4: If you're using Chrome, right-click on the image and select Search Google for image.

The results will tell you what other contexts the photo has appeared in. That'll help you spot multiple postings trying to sell the same object (like this pig chair, which isn't for sale but has appeared repeatedly on Craigslist). It'll also help you spot duplicate real estate listings, which may not have been posted by the same people.

How to run a reverse image search on your phone

Google Reverse Image Search App

For the quickest and most readable results, you'll want to be on a desktop web browser to run a reverse image search. The same search just isn't as straightforward to pull off on mobile. These are the simplest approaches you can try:

Option 1: In the mobile Chrome browser, you can hold down on an image and then select Search Google for this image.

Option 2: Hold down on the photo in your mobile browser and select the option that lets you copy the photo (Copy or Copy URL, for example). That puts the photo's URL onto your clipboard. Then paste the URL in the Google Images search bar.

You can also use the Google app, which lets you upload or take pictures of images. However, CNET found the results to be very spotty when trying to find the origin of a photo.

Google Reverse Image Search On Iphone

Why you might want to run a reverse image search

First, you can use a reverse image search to spot fraud and scams. Going on a first date? Run the person's Tinder profile picture through a reverse image search to see if the photo is associated with anyone else. Buying a product from a stranger on the internet? Do a reverse image search for the picture of the item to find out if it's been posted by other people.

Second, you can check to see if anyone is reusing your photos. This could be for a variety of reasons. Maybe they're using your face on Tinder, or maybe they're stealing photos of your crafts from Pinterest and claiming your creations as their own. If you have photos you don't want repurposed by strangers, it might make sense to run them through a reverse image search now and then.

Finally, you might want to win an argument. When someone posts an image with a news story that just doesn't sound right to you, you could try to look it up on Snopes. But the website, which fact-checks news stories, rumors and memes that fly around the internet, can't investigate everything. That's when it's time to open up Google.

What to do about fake or misleading posts

You can report a misleading or false meme to the social media platform you found it on. You can also report things like scam dating profiles, bogus for-sale posts and fake rental listings to the websites where they're hosted, as well as to the FTC. Steps for reporting the posts will be different for each website.

Google Reverse Image Search Desktop

You can also let people know they've posted something misleading, which they may have done unwittingly. You may be in for an argument, but you'll have facts to back you up.