How to Run a Reverse Image Search

The idea of a reverse image search is that you are, to some extent at least, searching in the opposite direction: You’re starting with an image that might otherwise be the end result of a search, but you’re wanting to know where it originated from—though that’s not the only way that a reverse image search can be useful. It’s a technique most often associated with tracking down the original source of a picture, which is particularly valuable in a context where misinformation and plagiarism continue to sweep across the web. Is the person posting a digital piece of art the original author? Has their profile picture been AI generated? A reverse image search will tell you.

You can also use this type of search to find different versions of the same image, whether that’s in a different size, a different crop, or a different color scheme. It can also be used to find out more about what’s in an image—the species of a flower you’re looking at, for example, or when a particular depicted event took place.

It’s a handy trick to know then, for numerous reasons, and it’s not difficult to run a reverse image search whether you’re using your phone or your computer.

Running a reverse image search on desktop

It’s probably easiest to start with the steps for running a reverse image search on your laptop or desktop: If you’re using Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge as your browser of choice, running a reverse image search is as simple as right-clicking on a picture you’ve found on the web, then selecting Search image with Google (Chrome) or Search the web for image (Edge).

Chrome opens a sidebar, whereas Edge takes you to the Bing Visual Search website, but the results will be pretty similar: You’ll see webpages containing images identical to or similar to the one you’re searching with. You may also see related searches based on whatever is shown in the image you’re using.

You can right-click to run a reverse image search in Google Chrome. Credit: Lifehacker

With the Chrome sidebar, you’re actually using Google Lens—Google’s visual search tech. You can click on any of the results to see the relevant page in a browser tab. Click Find image source at the top of the sidebar for a list of exact matches for your image, together with their resolution and the publication date of the page they’re on.

If you’re in Edge, your results are shown in a browser tab rather than a sidebar. Bing Visual Search will show you plenty of links for buying whatever’s in the image you’re searching with, and looking up related content, but you should also see a Pages with this image tab: Open this to see other places on the web where you can find the same picture.

Whatever browser you’re using, you can head straight to the Google Image Search or Bing Visual Search engines to run a reverse image search, using a photo from your computer or one you’ve found on the web. For a reverse image search on Google Image Search, click the Google Lens icon (the colorful camera) on the right hand side of the search box. You get the same results screens as you do using the tools built into Chrome and Edge.

Another reverse image search resource worth checking out is TinEye. It won’t be natively integrated into your browser, but load up the website, and you’ll see that it offers to install an extension for Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Opera—so you can run a reverse image search on any picture with a couple of clicks.

Use Bing Visual Search to find the origin of an image. Credit: Lifehacker

Whether or not you install the extension, the search box on the front page of the TinEye website lets you upload an image from your computer or paste in the URL of an image already hosted somewhere on the web. You’ll then be met with a page of results, listing the sites where copies of the image were found, and at what size and resolution.

Use the options at the top of the list to filter the picture results by a certain website, or to change the order of the results (you can see the oldest images first, for example, or those that have the highest resolution). Click on any of the results to go through to the relevant webpage and see the actual image.

Running a reverse image search on mobile

The process of running a reverse image search is pretty similar on phones and tablets too, but there are a few differences to know about when you’re working with mobile web browsers and smaller screens.

You can still load up Google Image Search, Bing Visual Search, and TinEye on your mobile browser, and use them in the ways we’ve described above. The Google and Bing options also let you snap an image using your phone’s camera, whereas with TinEye you would have to take the photo first, then pick it out from your gallery.

A long press in Chrome for Android or iOS brings up search options. Credit: Lifehacker

The Google Lens search technology can be accessed through the official Google app for Android and iOS as well, if you don’t want to have to go through your browser. Tap on the Google Lens icon (the colorful camera) that appears on the right of the search box on the Discover tab (Android) or Home tab (iOS) to get your results.

As far as searches inside a browser are concerned, in Chrome for mobile, you can long press on an image and choose Search image with Google Lens (Android) or Search image with Google (iOS) to run a reverse image search. In Edge for mobile, you can long press on an image and choose Search Bing for this image, but at the time of this writing, the feature is only available in the Android version of the browser.

Image Credit: Annie Spratt/Unsplash