How Well Does Google Reverse Search Really Work?

It tends to find all of mine it should find on FAA, Flickr and a few other sites. Are you uploading large sizes? That's what I typically do.

I had surprises in both directions:
- once it did not find a very touristy place where there should be hundreds in the internet.
- another search did show a part of the artwork in a frame hanging in the background of a small chair photo.

So it looks a bit like good luck but it seems to work very well in some cases.

Same as Joseph, mine show up in FAA/AW, Flickr, and one other site I used to belong to where a couple of mine are still lingering. Have never turned up any suspicious places.....yet. On some images it states that I should enter a description to assist the search.

I have been using it from the week it came out. Before that I used Tineye. It works excellent. There have been times when it missed some content or ignored it but I can't duplicate that now.
I have installed the Google Chrome extension. I also have the Firefox add-on. I track my stock photos with it to see how buyers use them and to do screen saves. Kind off the way photographers used to collect tear sheets from magazines. I also use it to find misuses taken from FAA.

The best way to use this is to use one of the extensions. I just do a right click from any image and it gives me the option toi search the internet with the image. As right click is disbled from the main page here I use the search results or the image pages.

I can't imagine using the web without it. I quickly can find the sources of most images on the web. I use it a lot when I am using Facebook. It will find the originals of photoshop fakes fast.

The Firefox add on is here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-similar-images/
The Chrome exTension is here:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/search-by-image-by-google/dajedkncpodkggklbegccjpmnglmnflm?hl=en

I don't trust any others. Also be careful not to allow sites use your own image to mislead you to malware sites. If they are trying to sell you back your own low res image, don't take the bait. Just move on. It's like attacking your own reflection.

Thanks to all for the fast and informative replies. I think I'll try using somewhat larger files that Joseph mentioned (I resized them to smaller sizes before uploading to save some time - maybe not the best way to go) and I'll definitely try the extensions Bradford mentioned. Thanks B for including the links!

Sounds like there are some misses (such as Rudi mentioned) but that overall it works fairly well, as Rudi, Joseph, Bradford and Greg indicated. Maybe I was too quick to judge. I'll give it another whirl.

Thanks guys - much appreciated.

Cristolin, I did not find your images using FAA as a source. Not even on FAA. I tried some other peoples and also their FAA images did not show up. So maybe it is because I am sourcing from FAA. But when I tried my own images or those from people who sell regularly it works. So I am guessing that FAA just ignores some images from FAA. I would think after you are here a while Google would index your images. But maybe it also has to do with how much you promote or link off site.

Which search are you suppose to use? When I right-click on an image I have 2 choices: search Google for this issue and search Google with this image.
-- mary ellen anderson

I have the new Norton Anti-Virus (ugh ) & now my search results are very limited.
For some reason I just didn't luck out with Google Chrome - kept telling me to download it - when I already had it. ( ?)

I have noticed the same thing ; on several of my images here - I get no results at all, & that is a bit concerning. Same size.

Similar results can be quite entertaining. For my Andy cat painting - Grumpy cat shows up as best match.
But on the plus side - for my Confetti image - Leonid Afremov's Park images come up. & that cheers me right up.

It's a bit maddening - once you start tracking your work - now you know how you will be spending the next few hours. I don't enjoy it.

Mary Ellen if you have an add on installed it will give say 'Search Google with this image" in the right click menu. Use that. It works fast. Be sure to scroll down to see other uses of the image, if any.

Janine you are showing good results for FAA. For the purple zebra it returns your home page plus a lot of the FAA search pages you are in. So I would say ranking high in an FAA search that is indexed by Google helps.

It returns quite a lot of FAA pages plus one page where you can download the image for free. I would ignore that as it is just a scaper site luring you to malware or something you don't want to see.

Oh, thank you Bradford. That is good to hear .


EDIT- thank you Bradford. There is a Template design site Blog on G+ that was thoughtful enough to give my Confetti painting away as a free download too for the holidays.

I would hope that people have enough sense to not do that.

Bradford, thanks so much for checking some of my images. It looks like you and I got similar results even though I think we used different methods for searching, if I understand you correctly.

I searched by uploading one of my own original file images to Google, and using that as the source - I didn't use the FAA image as a source. The file that I used from my computer is the identical image to the ones on FAA, although a smaller size.

I tried several images - some that have sold and some that have not. The only one to show up happened to be a sold one, but that could be coincidence. There were others with more views that did not turn up in the Google search.

You're probably correct about images not showing up because they're not indexed yet. But, at least I should still be able to use reverse search to check if my images are on other sites where they don't belong.

Thanks for taking the time to investigate. Very kind.

I just searched an image I usually don't search... and it turned up on several Facebook pages as cover shots. Google Search is a great resource. One thing I do is upload a file to search. I don't always get good results searching via links. And when I upload, I typically search for larger files. It seems like it will find similar sizes and smaller sizes, not always larger sizes. This may not be true though; it just seems that way to me.

reverse searches only work as well as they do. if they didn't find the images then it won't be found, but it may be there anyway. tineye is much slower, but sometimes it finds better matches than google. i use both. if you haven't been around long, or the image just isn't that popular, it might not have been indexed yet.

google is good for finding an exact or near exact match.

tineye is great for finding modified versions of it. like if they used it as a background for another image, or modified it in some way. i've found a few of mine that way.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

and sometimes the exact match is about size..if i reverse search a small image, sometimes google only pulls up similar sizes of that image.....

I have done plenty of image reverse searches on my own work and on others regarding another photographer stealing pictures. I was able to come up with many pages of results of who and how such pictures are being used. I was so determined to find the original photographer to a stolen photograph, that I started getting so far back into Google search, I was on other language sites...but I found the original photographer.

So yes I think it works. I also use tineye, for those times Google doesn't want to find anything. Using one of the other, I've always been able to find what I am looking for.

in the end i find it's not worth the heartburn to know who stole the images.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

I've sent invoices to four companies I found using my images. Three have paid. Not a bad percentage. And there's Pepcid for heartburn!

This is an interesting topic to me as I just heard about reverse image search. The few I checked didn't show up in the google search either, not even on FAA using the FAA url for the image.

As Mike said, they may not have been indexed yet. Especially if they were recently uploaded. I believe I read somewhere that Google can take up to eight weeks to index stuff.

it could take months or years before you'll find your stuff. and that stuff could have been there for a year. the bots have to index those sites. so if you can't find it now, you may have to try it again and again. the bots come here often, but the image bot may not, so just wait a bit. tin eye is even slower.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com