By now, most of us know how to use Google to search for words. But not everyone is hip to a more recent function: searching for images. In this post, you will get a quick guide to using Google to search for an original image or for similar images. Each step has screenshots to guide you where to click on the screen.
First, why would you want to do this? Imagine you see a picture online of a product you want, but don’t know where it’s sold. Now, you can find pages where that image appears. Or, you have a copyrighted image and you want to use something similar to it that isn’t copyrighted. Now you can find many possibilities. Someone recently blogged about an image by my favorite artist but didn’t remember where they got it. Using Google Image Search, I found pages showing the artist painting it and learned about the history of the piece.
Ready? Ok, so let’s get to it! In our example, we’re going to start with a picture that’s already on the web. In this case, we’ll use my picture from my Contact page. Google will magically tell us where else on the web that picture exists!
Step One: Open your browser and go to Google.com.
NOTE:You can click any of the thumbnails in this post for full-size screenshots.
You may notice my version of Google has a huge fiery sun on it today. I only mention it because some people may get confused that Google isn’t all white in this picture! You don’t have to settle for that boring white background on Google anymore. You can set the background image to anything you like! You can either reference a URL of an online image, or upload your own from your hard drive. You can access the feature by clicking “Change Background Image” at the bottom of Google.com. You do have to be signed into a valid Google Account for this to work. Google will associate the image with that specific Google Account. …Moving on!
Step Two: Find and click the Images tab on Google.com.
Step Three: Open a second browser window that has your image in it if you haven’t already. Below, you’ll see I’ve navigated to the Contact page of this site.
Step Four: Right click on the image to bring up a menu. At the bottom of the menu is “Properties” Click that.
Step Five: The Properties box appears. You can see the URL of the image in the box. This is the address of the image on the web. Use your mouse to highlight it and copy the text. (Right Click > Copy for those of you without a Copy button on your keyboard!)
Step Six: Go back to Google Image Search and click on the Camera Icon in the Search Box.
Step Seven: Paste the Image URL into the new Search Box that appears. Once the URL is pasted, click Search. Notice that right above the Search Box are the words “Upload an Image.” If you want to search for an image you already have saved on your hard drive, this is where you begin.
Step Eight: View your results! You can see here that my Contact page is at the top of the list, and then my LinkedIn Profile is below that. These are the only places on the web where this version of my smiling face appears.
Notice also that some enterprising fellows offer to help you find out everything there is to know about me! Since they can’t get my first name right, I doubt they will be much help – but they’ll probably be happy to take your credit card number. Be cautious with these kind of “find people” services, please!
At the bottom of the screen, you see ‘visually similar’ images. Google recognizes at least that I have a face, that fills a certain region of the picture frame, with certain colors and tones. You can see how this might have graphics applications. Say you have a picture of a balloon against a blue sky. It’s not quite right for your project, but you want something similar. This will help you!
Finally, please notice on the screenshot that SafeSearch-moderate is ON. For the faint of heart and easily offended, you might want to make sure you have SafeSearch ON before searching for images on Google. If you turn SafeSearch OFF, then you are liable to get a lot of… well, let’s just call it “not safe for work” content. Just be aware that you can turn SafeSearch on and off at will.
That’s it! Happy searching!
