Updated: June 18, 2019.

Contents:

Introduction to Google Images. Benefits. How to Use Google Images on Laptops, Macbook and Desktop Computers. Steps to Use Reversed or Advanced Images Search on Smartphones or Tablets. Conclusion.

More often than not, we search for an image on Google. Our search always returns several images which may not include the image we are looking for. At times, we may want to get more information about the image in our search results. Google Images offers wonderful results especially when our search criteria is right. Let’s have a look at what Google Images truly is. Google Images is a fully managed search services created by Google. It allows Google users to search the web for image content.

Google Images provides two modes of search – the Regular Image Search and Advanced or Reversed Image Search. A regular image search returns a thumbnail of each matching image. Clicking on the thumbnail will produce a larger size of the image and gives users the opportunity to visit the webpage containing that image. The advanced search option has a number of features that let users tailor down their searches to specific queries/pictures. You can use the feature by clicking on the small camera icon at the end of the search bar on google image search. Here, you can either put URL of the image or can also upload your image.

Benefits of Google Images Reversed or Advanced Search

With reversed or advanced search, you will be able to verify the real source of screenshots, photographs, WhatsApp images, and memes. You can also use the same functionality in social networking sites such as Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, instant messaging, and video hosting services such as Twitch and YouTube.

Google Reverse Image Search helps you to know more about any photograph. For example, Facebook users can use “Search by Image” to research profile pictures of their potential dates.

‘Search by image’ feature helps photographers to identify websites that are using their photographs. Note that ‘Search by image’ feature is only available on PC.

Google Reverse Image Search helps users to quickly discover visually similar images online.

It also helps journalists to use the reverse search option in finding the original source of an image. Google Images can provide them with information such as the approximate date when a picture was first published on the Internet.

Travelers can use Google Images to find a photo’s location. Some websites use reverse search to detect uploads that are fake.

How to Use Google Images on Your Laptops, Macbook and Desktop Computers

Here are the steps you need to follow:

Type images.google on the browser of your laptops, MacBook or desktop Computers. On the Google Images homepage, you can either Search by Image, Voice or type in your Query on the search bar. Click on the Camera Icon to use the Search by Image Option. Paste the Image URL or Click on Upload an Image tab to upload your image. To upload an image, tap Choose File to select the image file. You can also drag and drop the image on the search bar. Then, Click on Search by Image button to continue. The action will return visually similar images.

Steps to Use Reversed or Advanced Images Search on Phones or Tablets

Generally, Google’s ‘Search by Image’ feature is available only on laptops and desktop computers. However, you can still use the same feature on mobile phones or tablets if you follow the steps below:

Type reverse.photos on the browser of your mobile phone or tablet Tap the “Upload Image” button and Select an image from the photo gallery of your phone or tablet. Next click “Show Matching Images”. This action will feed your photo into Google’s image database and return visually similar photos.

Conclusion

You can either upload images from your Photo Gallery or you can take a new picture with your phone’s or tablet’s camera. You can also upload existing images from your cloud storage services such as Google Drive, iCloud, OneDrive, or Dropbox. What Google Images does with the submitted image is to analyze the image and find identifiers such as lines, colors, textures, and points. These unique features of the image are used to form a search query. The query is then matched against the images in Google’s database. If matched successfully, Google’s search and match algorithms return visually similar images as results to you.