If you are a photographer, a creator or a brand, your images are probably being used somewhere you don’t know about: product listings, fake profiles, ad creatives, blogs. Reverse image search is how you find them.

How reverse image search works

Instead of typing words, you give the search engine an image. It compares the image’s visual features with the images it has indexed and returns pages that contain the same picture, or something visually similar. Different engines index different parts of the web, so they find different copies.

Tools to try

  • Google Lens / Google Images: the largest index. Good at finding exact and resized copies, and pages that use the image.
  • Bing Visual Search: a separate index that sometimes finds pages Google misses.
  • TinEye: strong at finding exact and slightly edited copies, and shows when it first saw each one.
  • Yandex Images: often good with faces and with sites popular in some regions.

Try more than one. A copy that one engine misses, another often finds.

Make your search more effective

  • Search with your original, highest-quality image.
  • If the image might have been cropped, also search with the crop that is most likely to have been reused, such as the product or the face.
  • Search for flipped versions too; mirroring is a common trick to avoid detection.
  • For video, take still frames from key moments and search for those.
A match is a candidate, not a verdict. Search engines show visually similar images. Before you act, open the page and check it really is your picture.

The problem with checking once

A search shows you what exists today. New copies appear every week. Manually re-checking dozens of images is tedious, so most people stop after the first try.

That is the gap DrutoScan’s Brand Protection fills. You upload your images (or a video, from which we take frames) once. We search the web for each one on a schedule and show you every new place it turns up. Each found copy is fingerprinted to check whether it really is your image, and the evidence is saved in case you want to request a takedown.

When you find a copy

  1. Save the page link and a screenshot.
  2. Decide whether it is a problem: a credited share may be fine; a shop selling your product photo is not.
  3. If it is, use the platform’s copyright form or send a DMCA notice. Our DMCA takedown guide explains how.

Frequently asked questions

Which is the best reverse image search?

There is no single best one. Google Lens has the largest index, but TinEye, Bing and Yandex each find copies the others miss. Use more than one.

Can reverse image search find cropped or edited photos?

Often, if a large enough part of the original is still visible. Heavily cropped, combined or filtered images are harder to find, so search with likely crops as well.