I’ve got a super quick and easy tutorial for you today. This is a cool trick I’ve been using a lot lately, and I thought I’d pass on this neat tool to you just in case you’ve ever wondered how to do this. Did you know there’s a really simple way to see if photos have been taken from your blog and uploaded to another site? This trick will allow you to do a “Reverse Image Search” for any photo from your blog, or any photo you’ve uploaded on the internet, to see a list of all the other sites where this photo appears.
Why would you to do a reverse image search?
- To see if your uploaded photos are being used on another site without your permission.
- To find the original source of a popular Pinterest, Tumblr, or Facebook photo.
- If you have a photo on your computer and you can’t remember where it came from.
*This trick can also be useful if you if have a photo on your computer, and you can’t remember where it came from. You’ll first have to upload it to the internet so you can grab its URL.
Once you’ve done that, here’s how you do a Reverse Image Search.
Find the image on your blog, right click, and select Copy Image Location (Firefox) or Copy Image Address (Safari).
IE Users: Right click on the image, select Properties, and highlight the Address (URL) and click CTRL-C to copy.
Paste the URL into Google.
On the result page, click Search by Image.
And this is what will pop up next. You’ll first see a collage of Visually Similar Images. This is pretty interesting to browse through. Not all of these images may be your images, but they will all look a lot like your image. It’s kinda neat.
Keep scrolling down, and now these results will all be for the image you searched for. You can click on these results and see all the sites where your photo is posted.
And that’s all you do! You’ll probably see a lot of sites like Pinterest, and you may discover new sites that have written about your blog and shared a photo or two. Try doing a reverse image search on photos from your most popular post, and see what comes up.
Hope you find this useful!
Follow Kevin and Amanda on Pinterest.
More from Amanda:
Share:
Filed Under: Blog Design • Tutorials
Follow Amanda on 
139 Comments
You always post such useful tips Amanda, thank you so much :o)
A quick question though – will this work if the person, who has downloaded your photo and “recycled” it for their own use, has renamed the photo? Or will it only work if they re-post the photo with exactly the same name/URL that it originally came with when you posted it – I hope that makes sense?
Great question Candice! Yes, it will definitely work if the photo has been renamed — It will even work if the photo has been cropped, resized or even had minor changes made to it like lightened or darkened as well.
That is amazing! Thanks again for this really cool info :o)
Wow – extremely cool, helpful and I could have some fun playing around with this!
That’s extremely usuful !!! Thank you Amanda! :D
Wow. This is awesome! And so helpful. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the great tip!
You can actually just click the photo whether its on a web page or on your desktop and drag it to the Google search box to do the same thing. I just learned this trick a few months ago and its amazing
AWESOME tip! Thanks Cynthia – and Amanda! The drag and drop feature is way better than all that cutting and pasting.
I was so excited about the drag-and-drop option! I tried it in IE and Chrome, but nothing happened. Am I missing a step?
Yeah, I’m not sure how accurate this is Kim, I never could get it to work either! (Firefox & Safari on Mac)
Hmm I don’t know why its not working. This is the only way I look up images and have never had an issue. I do use Google Chrome mostly and never on a MAC. But I think I have gotten to work on IE and FireFox. I will try to figure it out for ya.
Thanks Amanda! It’s always fun learning something new, geeky, and simple! To think, this has been here all along. You’re so clever. :)
Hi Amanda. FYI, there is a pinterest post out there (wish I had marked it but I didn’t) that uses your before and after weight loss pics and when you click on it it goes to some weight loss site. Didn’t look like anything I have seen you mention, so you might want to search pinterest if you can.
Thanks so much for letting me know, Anne! That is exactly what I’ve been using this tutorial for. I end up spending a couple hours every night combing through search results and Pinterest posts finding the stolen photos and reporting them to Pinterest. I usually report about 150 pins per night! Crazy, isn’t it?? If you ever see one, just send me the URL and I will report it. :)
how do you upload a photo to the internet and grab the url?
do you have a tutorial for that?
thanks you so much
If you don’t have a blog and can’t use the tutorial above (which shows you how to get the URL from a photo on your blog), you can use a site like Photobucket.com to upload a photo and get the URL.
Cool trick! Love all your bloggy tutorials!
I don’t know why but I’m scared to do this! LOL
We randomly discoverred someone “grabbed” my facebook background photo I had taken on my Alaskan cruise from my balcony and posted and then put on his facebook as his background! I guess he thought it was lovely!!! I do not re-post anything unless it has a “pin it” button on it as I believe that these belong to the person who posts it unless they have given permission by the “pin it” button.
This is awesome. Thank you!!! :)
I love your tutorials. Thank you so much.
Cool. Thanks, Amanda!
ooooh, I do that too!!! great tip to share Amanda!
Thanks! I used it today and you are right, some of my pics are on Pinterest. Really like your tips and tutorials.
Thanks for sharing! I had no idea you could do this!
Thanks for the tip. I just did a search on one photo and unfortunately saw that it was misused on multiple sites. One site is in another language and they’ve watermarked it as their own! Very bummed. Have’nt even checked other photos. Any advice? I think I have to go back and start watermarking.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have found one of my photos is being used numerous places. I can’t understand how people think it is OK to steal! My lemon ice box pie photos are being used all over the place, and not just by me.
just because she’s beettr than you and smarter than you and beettr looking than you doesnt mean you need to run your mouths like the morons we all know you are. anybody that wants to learn how to play guitar can learn something from her.
Thanks so much for this valuable advice, Amanda. I’ve been seeing lots of bloggers write about pirating of content and photos lately. Even though I am a little blog I know I need to at least watermark my photos. I haven’t found a “painless” way to do it without uploading/downloading each photo to a photo editing site.
Miss Kitty- do you photoshop at all? There is an easy way to make a stamp in PS so that you can just stamp on your watermark while editing before uploading. It’s a great little trick!
Thank you Amanda! I fell in love with your site a long time ago because of post like this, recipes, and your fonts, not because you became popular and have been sent traveling all over the world and post about trips and pushing products on your readers. It is very refreshing to have some tutorials and fonts back from you so I am motivated to keep reading! This was a very helpful tutorial as well.
What a great tip! Thanks!
Great tip! Thank you for sharing this!
So cool!! Thank you!
I love this tutorial! Definitely helpful to see who is talking about you or what you’re talking about.
Great tip Amanda. Thanks!
Hi there! I would love to try this, but I have a Safari web browser and neither of your copy image location techniques work. Any help?
Thanks!
Safari users, right click on the image and select Copy Image Address.
i use safari, have a blogger blog with my photos backing up to picasa and this doesn’t work for me either. :(
Thank you for this!!! I just found a photo of mine on a magazine website that was posted back in December of 2010. They pulled the photo off of one of my Tasty Kitchen recipes. What do I do now? Demand they remove it? Ask for payment? Not sure how to go about this. Thanks!
A dear friend of mine just sent me this. It’s a pretty awesome sample Cease and Desist letter:
http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/cease-and-desist-letter.html
I never worry too much about this because I just have found it’s not really worth my time, however, you make it look so much easier than any other route I’ve tried. Smart! Thanks for sharing!
wow thanks for this great tip! never knew you could do this, going to give it a try now and see what i find
This is amazing. I knew some of my photos had gone viral on Pinterest but had no idea some have been used on other blogs that much. Great tip! Thanks Amanda! :)
Your site is so cute! I can see why your photos are going viral! :)
This is AWESOME and so helpful Amanda ~ gonna play around with this now!
Thanks so much for this info, Amanda! I am almost afraid to do a search as I know many people take and use my photos without permission. It is sad that others feel the need to pass off other’s work as their own. :( I hate watermarking my photos so I guess that is part of the problem. This tip will help me weed out the worst photo stealing offenders.
Great tip … Thx for sharing :-)
That is cool to know! I swear…I learn something new every single day. Your site has been so entertaining and informative. Thanks so much, Amanda!!!
Oh, this is a good way to lose oneself for a couple of hours! :)
Love your tutorials!
Thank you! I tried it on a number of shots and it was fascinating to see how far they have traveled. On the few I checked it was all above board, but will be interesting to keep tabs on things.
Thank you for sharing this useful tip! I checked just one photo from my blog to discover several people who had stolen a whole tutorial from my site… with no link backs or credit given. It was a little discouraging and at the same time very empowering!
Great idea. However I use Goggle Chrome and I don’t have that option when I right click. What should I look for using Chrome when I right click?
Sam
In Chrome I see the option to Copy Image URL.
Amanda, thanks for the help with Chrome. I discovered that if a blogger has a blog roll with your blog listed in their sidebar that shows an image along with a link, you’ll find it when you search as suggested.
Sam
Thanks for the reminder on this — I haven’t done it in a while and so spent some time with it this morning. Most of what I discovered for one popular photo from the archives is not linked to my site in any way. Figures.
Great tutorial as always!
Great tip, thank you! To those using Google Chrome, I chose “copy image URL” and then paste that into a google search. :)
very cool, i never knew about this. it helps so much, esp as we just bought our very first professional camera and we will be trying to post only our own photos now. thanks!
This is a great tutorial! Thanks so much! I’ve been wondering how to do something like this, with all of the stolen post drama I’ve been hearing about. Thanks again!
You always have the best tricks and tips! Thanks!! Sadly, I couldn’t find any of my pictures anywhere else… I guess that’s a good thing, though perhaps it just means I’m unpopular? HA! :)
You rock!! Thank you so much.
Ohhh man. I am now going to want to check my photos. This is a great tool, thanks a million. xoxo
Hey Amanda, thanks for the tutorial! I have found a huge number of tumblr pages that have copied my photos/recipe post word for word with no source and have sent an “ask me anything” message many times to remove/source the work, but to no avail! Any tips for tumblr photo stealing??
Many thanks :)
Oh my- that is pretty crazy!!! I will have to try this. Thank you!
Hey Amanda! I saw your before an after pictures on pinterest supporting a weightloss program. I clicked on it because I thought it was something from your site. I reported it, but you might want to keep your eyes out for it!!
Thanks so much for letting me know, Beth! That is exactly what I’ve been using this tutorial for. I end up spending a couple hours every night combing through search results and Pinterest posts finding the stolen photos and reporting them. I usually report about 150 pins per night! Crazy, isn’t it?? If you ever see one, just send me the URL and I will report it. :)
thank you!!!
Thank you so much for this! I found out that one of my photos was being used by a sausage company with a completely different recipe.
Thank you for the tutorial–this much much easier than I thought! I usually just rely on Google Alerts and pingbacks to find stolen content, but I really need to start doing this too.
Thanks for the tip! I recently discovered photos posted on cooking-pics.com without credit or link backs, so this is very appropriate timing.
Thanks for the great article, so glad my friend RT’d you on Twitter! I’ve got a few images that sometimes pop up in my google analytics traffic results, and I’d been thinking I should check around to make sure they’re not being used anywhere else. Thanks so much!
Hi Amanda! Thanks for the helpful hint. I tried it on several of my photos but got this message in Google: The image is too big, or the network connection is too slow to download it.
Any ideas?
This is awesome! Thank you for sharing ~
So cool! I thought I was a nobody but low and behold my jazz is all over the place. I’ll take that as a compliment! Thanks…
Who knew? Thanks for this informative post.
I hate the idea of watermarking photos, but I wonder if that’s what everyone should be doing (in tiny print)–with link to original website? What do you think?
This is great. Super helpful. So interesting to see where your photos end up.
Great info, thanks for sharing. Hope it’s okay, I pinned this to remember in the future!
Thank you for this! I keep hearing about these sites that steal you stuff and repost it so this will be helpful! I would love for you to come share it on I Freakin did it Fridays @ Miss Information
OMG!! I didn’t even know this could be done!! Thanx so much for posting this!
I just reverse-searched a pic from my most popular post and found it LOTS of places… including a news channel in Fayetteville Arkansas where they broadcasted it on their morning news, hahaha!
Thanx again… new follower here!
Hmmm I think I may be completely computer dumb. I did what you said for safari users, “Safari users, right click on the image and select Copy Image Address.” And still no such luck… it’s not providing me with an appropriate image link.
Any suggestions?
Thanks for the great tutorial. It was simple to follow and easy to accomplish!
Love your stuff!
Jeri
Interesting blog post on the reverse image search. So, here’s a one that’s stumped me: I’ve put pretty strict restrictions on my online photos (no right clicking to copy on my blog, Flickr and Facebook). However, that doesn’t stop someone from using my imaging (screen shots circumvent that pretty easily, that’s why I’ve started watermarking my images). Anyway, I wonder if there’s a way to search images whose URLs are unsearchable???
Wow. Super-cool tip! Found you via Pinterest. Looking forward to following you! :)
This is awesome. I have my blog right click disabled since someone stole images of my kids & used them for her fake life on FB. This would have come in handy before that happened to me. Since I couldn’t try it on my blog- I tried it here to see it in action- only I didn’t have to copy the image & upload. When I right clicked- it gave me the option in the drop down to just search image in Google. Which then gave me the same page you showed with the results. I will try to use that other tip someone left about dragging the image to the search bar to test it that way. Although I also disabled left click on my images so I may have to go to my web albums to try this out.
thanks for this very neat and useful tip!
Super helpful tutorial! I just found one if your pics on pinterest too, and came over to send it to you, but I don’t see any contact info for you – help! Do I just need better glasses?? :)
THANK YOU Amanda for posting this tutorial! After following it I found two of my images posted on two different sites. :( One cropped it and posted it as a free wallpaper download. I can’t find an owner to the website, so I have no one to email :( I tried posting in the comments section but it’s still “awaiting moderation” GRRR!!! The other one I found an email for and sent them a message to remove my image. We’ll see how that goes…
Update: I found this post that easily explains how to disable the right click function for your site. I just added it to my blog and it works! :-) Thought I’d pass it along in case anyone else wants to do it too…. http://www.beinggeeks.com/2009/02/how-to-disable-right-click-in-blogger-blogspot.html
You can go to Google Images at http://images.google.com and click the little camera on the right side of the search box. Then you can paste your URL or even upload your own image there.
Every time I see something that I know is from your site (which I seem to have memorized because I’ve been a regular reader for so long) or other blogs I frequent on Pinterest or anywhere else, I make sure to “comment” who should get the credit. : )
Lately I’ve been seeing your t-shirt scarf pop up a lot.
This could become my new obsession. I am not sure if I should be thanking you or cursing you! :)
I had no idea how to do this, thank you so much! I know someone has taken photos from my site but now I actually see what they are doing with them!
It’s timely that you posted this because I ran across this today on pinterest. http://pinterest.com/pin/376895062535114483/
It’s your photo advertising for a weight loss program.
Such a key tip, Amanda. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for such a helpful post Amanda!!
thank you so much for this! very helpful !
You could also drag the image from your blog , pc, mac drag and drop the image in Google Images search and it will do the very same thing. You’ll get the same results. :-)
Wow, thank you for sharing! I tried this and found someone using my pictures to advertise for their business! Yikes!
Excellent info!! The first one I put in brought up my photo and my recipe on someone else’s site with a bit “pin it” button over the top of MY photo on THEIR site. Ugh!!!
Thanks a lot. We wanted to know about any duplication of our site http://www.RealEstateDealStreet.com logo
Great little trick! I kind if enjoy seeing my photos on tumblr sites. :)
I tried this with a photo I know for a fact was taken and put as someone’s Facebook profile photo. It only showed the link to my blog, not to the Facebook page.
i use this: http://jarred.github.com/src-img/ .. just install on your tool bar & click away!
Ack. I can’t BELIEVE how many people have stolen my photos. I see above that someone has given an even easier way to track down thieves. Anyone know of a program that alerts you if an image is republished?
my question is what do you do when someone is stealing your photos/posts? Especially the foreign ones– I don’t really know how to stop them.
This is awesome, so useful! THANK YOU!
I just found this through Pinterest – THANK YOU! I had the experience of several of my photos (pinned from my blog) ending up on Pinterest weight lost “spam” sites – and at least one(which was not related at all to porn) on a board I would characterize as soft porn with a weight loss message. Disgusting! Thank you a third time!
Very cool! I just found a bookmark I had made in May that people have pinned on Pinterest. I’m glad I had something people thought was fun and/or useful :)
how do you do this on windows 8 for facebook ?
Wow! Great tutorial, thanks!!!
I’m number 112 in your comments, and it’s just Brilliant ! Thanks
Amanda and Kevin,
Can you help? Photos were sent to me (we met on an online dating site) and turns out the person on the site is pretending to be this woman. It’s actually a man posing as her. He has sent some pics that I highly doubt she would want floating around (not sure how she feels about non-heterosexuality but it’s a lesbian dating site). The poser is sucking a lot of women in for sure.
Is there a way to take the photos and try and learn who she is so that she can be told what the heck is happening to her photos? I just have photos sent to me via email. If I were in her position, I would want to know.
I tried on google reverse photo search with no luck and tineye with no luck.
Thanks for your help.
Caitlin
PS. The poser/thief has taken this woman’s photo and created a fake FB page too. I turned it in as a fake but it’s still up.
I have a MAC if that helps you to answer. And I’m not very computer savvy.
Thank you so much. I can’t believe I fell for such a cruel and deceitful ploy. Embarrassed is all I can say.
Caitlin
Hello Caitlin, Just read your comments & my heart sank… mainly because i am trying to get google reverse image to work for me on my mac & ipad. Tineye works for me but i’m needing more results! I am trying to learn if I have been catfished once again!! I have met way too many fakes as you describe. Can you share the fake FB profile name?
thanks, julia
How would you do this if you have right click disabled on your blog. Is there another way to get the file location or URL?
You can use this Enable Right Click bookmarklet tool: Enable Right Click
I’ve always used tineye.com for this, but it’s nice to know there is another option that might catch things the other missed. I’ve always watermarked my photos, but it’s easy to crop those out anymore.
I tried to use this for my pics on flickr but it doesn’t seem to be working. Is there a way to do this with photos on flickr?
Hi Ed, I just spent 20 minutes checking my own Flickr pictures so I can assure you it works. :)
Right-click on the ‘preview’ on your pictures on the gallery, not on the picture page. Have fun :)
Dear Amanda, thank you very much for this very useful tip. Now I found out that a picture of mine has been used to illustrate the weblog of an escort-girl. ;) THANKS !