Google is the top most used search engine. We can’t even imagine that how the algorithm of google works. But whenever we search and whatever we search, we get the best results out of it. You might be amazed to hear that Google not only search for the written content rather it searches and gives results for the images as well. That means we can search for the images in a search engine as and when required.
There are two ways commonly used to search images from a search engine. One way is to type text about the required images and give detailed information about it. this way of searching images is unknown as advanced image search. Another way is to upload image or own choice or put a link to the image you would like to search for similar images. Google will find similar images for that particular image. This way of searching images is known as Reverse Image search.
Reverse Image search is the future of search engines. It is being used widely but still, there are any numbers of people who are not familiar with this technique of searching images on search engines including Google, Bing, Pinterest, Reddit, etc. Let’s go through the technique of searching images by uploading an image. This is the best technique of searching for an image.
Let’s take an example to understand it in a better way. I was walking down the street and I saw a stranger wearing very nice shoes. I wanted to buy such shoes but I dare to ask that stranger. So, I just took the image of the shoes on my phone, upload that image to Google reverse image search, I got all the information about the shoes. Its brand, size, available quantity, an online store to buy and offline store to buy.
This same technique is being used by social media too. This is surely the future of search engines. With the growth of the internet and its users, the usage of internet is getting easier day by day. As the growth graph of Facebook is heading towards an upward direction, it will be in no time that we can upload an image of someone stranger and we will get all the information about it.
This is good to some extent that we can get all the information about any stranger just by one click of him but it increases the threat of losing privacy. Like others, someone can also search for us and I recommend to not share personal and private information about us and our family. This can be a threat to privacy. But we can also trace a person on social media who might be using our images on social media.
Let’s discuss in detail about different image search tools: –
Google Reverse Image Search: –
It is one of the content-based image retrieval systems. It is based on inputting sample image in the search bar and Google will fetch similar images to it. We can also get information about that image through Google reverse image search. We can directly upload the image or put URL in the search bar and Google will fetch all the information related to it on the Web.
There are many other such tools available on different social media but they have hindrance of searching only to limited data available to them. But as we know Google is the giant and has access to the information available all over the internet. This is one of the best tools to use.
Catfish finder – Reverse Image Search: –
It is the most effective app in the era of the Internet. It is used to find pictures which are associated with social networking websites. These pictures include a profile picture, cover picture, and other photographs which we upload on social media. If we want to make sure that pictures we are uploading on social media are not being used by anyone over the Internet than this is the best tool. It even finds the images of fake social media profiles. We can find the identity of a person, whom we met online.
TinEye Reverse Image Search: –
Tineye is a product of Toronto based company naming Idee Inc. It is the most popular reverse image search engine. it has indexed 13.9 billion images to date. It works same as Google Reverse image search engine. We have to upload an image of our choice, or we can put URL of the image then it will fetch all the information related to it. It will show all the related images of the uploaded image. The algorithm of this search engines does not recognize the objects and persons in the image rather it recognizes the picture as a whole.
Karma Decay Reverse Image Search on Reddit: –
It is a dedicate reverse image search engine for Reddit. It helps us to search for the post which has already posted on Reddit. As we know, Redditors don’t like repetitive posts. It searches for all the subreddits but we can limit it to a particular subreddit.
Bing Image Match: –
It is an app by Bing search engine for Reverse Image search. It is a chrome extension. Bing image match is very easy to use. The search result of Bing image match is divided into two parts, one reveals the sizes of the image in different dimensions. And reveals the related images published on the web. When we click on these images, it will open that link in a web browser directly.
Yandex: –
Yandex works same like Google. It is a search engine mostly used in Russia. It is also known as Russian Google. Same like Google, Yandex also has reverse image search tools. It was developed to find and track the duplicate images on the web. It is one of the reverse image search engines which is free to use, even no need to sign in to use.
Yandex owns it’s browser too. While using that browser we can search for any image by just right clicking on the image and selecting “search for this image on Yandex”. This option works same as Yandex reverse image search tool.
Baidu: –
As we know from the name Baidu is Chinese search engine. Like all the other search engines, Baidu too has its own reverse image search engine. It works similar to all the other available options but the drawback I personally feel about this is, the search results are only available in the Chinese language. But if you are familiar with Chinese unlike me then you can use it. If you are not familiar with Chinese like me than it would be difficult to translate Chinese into readable language every single time.
Pinterest: –
Pinterest, reverse image search was launched probably in November 2015. It is one of the best reverse image search tools as it has a different feature from all the others. It can reverse search an image from its particular area. Let’s take an example to understand this, we want to know about the particular person in a group picture of 10 persons, we can zoom the image to that person and select the reverse image search for that zoom area in the image. It will show results related to that person in the picture only not for the whole image. This feature is not available with any of the other apps.
Image Identify by Wolfram: –
This tool was launched in the month of May 2015. It is one of the best examples of Artificial Intelligence. It is basically not a reverse image search engine rather it is based on Image Identification algorithm. There are many changes needed to be done, it is not a perfect tool for image identification but yet a good tool for it. It might be improved with time.
All the above-mentioned apps and tools are the result of innovation and technology. These are beyond our imagination and it will grow more with time. Few of these tools are popular than others rather fewer are not much familiar to users. These tools are useful for such situations when you want to know about any stranger whom you met online. You just have his picture and knows nothing about him then we can search for him with his picture only. We can identify whether he is a genuine or fake person.
Another example of usage of these tools is we want to know about a gadget which we have found in magazine or flyer but have no information about it, even not known by its title. We can easily upload its image and search for it to know in detail.
Please share your experience of using any of the above-stated apps with us. We would love to know your views.
