How to Search by Image on Google

By Gadgets 360 Staff | Updated: 13 April 2017 14:56 IST

Highlights

Google’s Search by Image feature lets you find similar images
You can upload a picture or paste a URL to search
It also helps you check if an image has been copied by other sites

Everyone knows how to use Google Image Search that lets you quickly find images on the Internet. But not everyone knows about search by image, that can help you in a wide variety of cases. Sometimes you want to search for the sources of images, or maybe you have an image on your computer or found one online, and you want a high-resolution version or want to check if someone has posted it online. Or perhaps you want to check the authenticity of the latest WhatsApp forward you received. Or you have a picture of a table, and you'd like to buy the same one; or you've seen a picture of a cartoon character you are not able to recognise. These are all scenarios where Google’s Search by Image tool can be handy.

We’ve used search by image feature multiple times to check if people have pasted our images on other websites. We’ve also been using it to look for images similar to the ones we find online or some that are stored on our computer. Google’s search by image works quite well and often you’ll find a much better high-resolution version of the image you have, which is always good news.

Follow these steps to search by image on Google on desktop:

Open Google’s Search by Image page.
Click the camera icon in the search box.
Now you can paste the URL of the image you’ve found online and click Search by image.
Alternatively you can click Upload an image, then Choose File. This lets you upload any image stored on your computer.
Once the image is uploaded, you’ll see results for similar images, webpages that have those images, and you can click on More sizes to find the same image in different resolutions.

You can also search by image on your smartphone but there is a small workaround involved if you want to access all features. By default, the mobile version of the search by image page doesn’t show the camera icon mentioned above. Follow these steps and you won’t face that issue.

Open Google’s Search by Image page.
Now you need to find the Request desktop site feature in your browser.
On Safari, hit the Share icon and scroll to the right in the bottom row. Tap Request Desktop Site.
On Google Chrome, tap the three vertical dots on the top-right and tap Request Desktop Site. Look for similar feature in other browsers. As long as your browser has this feature, the following steps will help you search by image on Google.
Now you will see the desktop version of the Search by Image page.
Tap the camera icon in the search box and from there, the steps to search by image on Google are the same as the desktop version.
If you click Upload an image and then Choose file on a smartphone, you can even click a photo and search for it on Google.

If you use Google Chrome browser on Android or iOS, there is one more way to search by image on Google, if the image you want to use is already on another website.

Launch Google Chrome on iOS or on Android.
Open any webpage with an image, such as an article in Google Chrome.
Tap and hold any image on the article. In the pop-up, select Search Google for this image.
This will show where the image has been used on the Internet.
You can also tap More sizes to find high-resolution versions of the same image.

This is how you search by image on Google. For more tutorials, visit our How To section.

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