How to search by image

Search by image allows you to do a reverse image search and discover all sorts of content that's related to a specific image. For example, search using a picture of your favorite band and see search results that might include similar images, webpages about the band, and even sites that include the same picture.

How to search

There are a few ways to search by image:
  • Visit images.google.com, or any Images results page, and click the camera icon camera icon in the search box. Enter an image URL for an image hosted on the web or upload an image from your computer.
  • Download a browser extension for Google Chrome or Firefox to search with any image on the web, simply by right-clicking on the image. Tip: After downloading your desired browser extension, you can change the extension setting so that the camera icon appears when you hover over an image. Then you will be able to simply click on the camera icon and search by the image.
Search by image works best when the content is likely to show up in other places on the web. For this reason, you’ll likely get more relevant results for famous landmarks or paintings than you will for more personal images like your toddler’s latest finger painting.

The results page

When you search by image, your results will look different than your normal Images or Web results page. The biggest difference is that your results can include non-image results like webpages that seem relevant to the image that you searched for.

Google's use of user-submitted images and URLs

When you search by image, any images that you upload and any URLs that you submit will be stored by Google. Google uses those images and URLs solely to provide and improve our products and services.

  • Feb 27, 2013