How does image search work

To paste a link to a image found online, just right-click on the image and select Copy Image Address. Chrome users have another advantage, namely the ability to perform a reverse image search whenever they come across an image on a website. Anyone wanting to do so simply needs to right-click on the image and select Search Google for Image. Normally, when searching Google Images, you input a term such a flowers or landscape and Google will aim to show you the most relevant images related to that search term.

With reverse image search, however, you start off by uploading an image, or inputting the URL of an online image. Should an exact match be found, Google will display this, indicating the different sizes of images it has been able to find. Related images, along with relevant web pages, will also typically be shown. Many photographers use reverse image search to discover whether an image of theirs has been published somewhere online without their authorization.

Read more: How to attach copyright information to every image you take. Reverse image search is not just about finding exact copies of an image, but also related images, based on the recognition of the subject within them. And this unlocks many other benefits of the service. First, it may bring up many similar images that may have some kind of useful or interesting information attached to them.

Alternatively, if Google is confident that it has correctly recognised the subject within an image, it might show this in a separate panel known as a Knowledge Graph box. This may provide further images of the subject, as well as key information. Social Media. More Button Icon Circle with three vertical dots.

It indicates a way to see more nav menu items inside the site menu by triggering the side menu to open and close. Laura McCamy. Google reverse image search allows you to search with an image rather than written keywords. When you reverse image search, Google finds websites, images, and information related to your photo. You can conduct a Google reverse image search on iPhone or Android with the Chrome mobile app, or on any computer.

Visit Insider's Tech Reference library for more stories. Insider Inc. Additional comments. Email optional. Receive a selection of our best stories daily based on your reading preferences. Deal icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. I will be using the right click technique to carry out my search. It looks like this:. Additional sizes: the first option I am presented with is to search for other sizes of the image:. Sites with similar content: the second option shows me websites that contain digital marketing maps.

When I click on the Gartner link, it shows me their version of the map, not ours. Visually similar images: the third option on the results page brings up visually similar images to the image that has been searched:.

Pages with matching images: finally, the results bring up a list of websites that include matching images to the one that I have searched for. In this case it is sites that are using our Digital Marketing Map, and scrolling thru I can see there are 67 sites using our image:. The Google Reverse image searches only a restricted part of the entire digital ecosystem.

Whilst it brings up results from LinkedIn and Pinterest websites, it does not appear to bring up images used in Twitter or Instagram. As you can see, it is a very easy tool to use, and it can generate insightful results. But why should you use it? Google reverse image search is a useful tool to identify content related to specific images, how popular certain images are, and where they can be found on the web.

However, there are other benefits of using reverse image search from a digital marketing perspective:. As they say, mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery, and the reuse of your images is a sign that your content has resonated with your audience sufficiently that they are choosing to embed it in their own content.

As the results page showed, reverse image search provides you with a list of websites that have included your image, whether they have permission to use it or not. This provides you with a great opportunity to build links back to your own website, where the site in question credits you for the image used. If not, you are well within your rights to ask for the credit in the form of a link. This is a useful tool for identifying who has used your images on their website.

The results pages identified a range of visually similar images to the Hallam tube map. The results I found showed similar, but fundamentally different images.

This problem can arise when someone uses your exact image, but puts their own logo on it in order to pass it off as their own. This is an infringement of your intellectual property. There is nothing worse than paying for expensive stock images, only to find a few weeks later that your competitor has the exact same image on their website. Checking sites that already include your chosen image can help you avoid this pitfall.

By checking sites with the same images, you can identify the context in which other companies are using the same image and avoid negative connotations.

If you are using images that are not copy protected, reverse image search allows you to find a higher resolution version of the image for your design work.

Google are not the only provider of reverse image searches. How to use Reverse Image Search. Now that we know what reverse image search is, I will explain how to use it. Use the Chrome app to do a search. Tap the image you want to search with to open a larger version of the image. Touch and hold the image. In the box that appears, tap Search Google for this image. Examples of reverse image search in action Now I have showed you the ways in which this function can be used, lets take a look at some of the results it generates.

Google Additional sizes: the first option I am presented with is to search for other sizes of the image: Sites with similar content: the second option shows me websites that contain digital marketing maps. While Google Search produces web pages with text-based content by scanning text-based content directly, Google Images returns image media based on entered keywords, so its process looks a little different under the hood. The main factor in determining what images populate your results page is how closely search terms match image filenames.

As a final ingredient, the algorithm leverages primitive machine learning, in which Google Images learns to associate certain images with one another to create clusters, to provide its reverse image search feature. Once a search is submitted, the service returns a set of thumbnail images correlating to your keyword description.

At this point, users can access web pages containing a selected image, provided the website hosting the image allows this. There are three simple ways to access Google Images:.

Just as with Google Search, you can use Google Images by entering textual search terms describing the image. This delivers a results page with a grid of thumbnails, arranged in order of match accuracy from left to right and top to bottom. On this page, simply follow these steps.

Select a thumbnail to see a larger version of it inline next to a brief list of information on its source. From here, select Visit to navigate to the source web page containing the full image. If selecting Visit leads you to the page containing the full image, you can make use of the image in a few ways; right-click or, on mobile, long-press the image. Select one of the following:. Now you have a separate image or link with the isolated image.

The first of these drop-down options is Size, which lets you limit the results to images with certain pixel dimensions. This can either be a general size range, or even an exact pixel dimension, and is done via the following steps. Select Size.