Reverse image search refers to the concept of searching for occurrences of a specific image on the Internet. The usual image search engines let users enter a search term which gets searched in their database. They then display images that are related to that search term in the results. Reverse Image Search on the other hand begins with an image.
TinEye is a reverse image search engine that accepts images that are uploaded from the local computer but also images located on websites. The second method requires some explanation. It is possible to point the search engine to an url of an image or to point it to a website. Pointing it to a website will retrieve all images located on that website giving the user the choice to select any of them for the reverse image search.
The quality of the results depends a lot on the selected image. TinEye will display the number of related images that it found in its database which is currently containing 1.04 billion entries. A quick test for images on Ghacks brought up mixed results. A search for the Firefox logo used on this site returned more than 2000 results while a search for the Ghacks logo returned a handful that were not related at all.
TinEye provides an interesting service that might be useful for people who like to check if their images or photos are used on other websites. It might also be interesting for research and other purposes. The service is currently in beta stage.
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Nice article, but was this inspired by all of the talk on Google Similar Images search in Google Labs?
What about google’s new “Similar images”?
http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/
Well google’s similar images search only works for pictures that are already visible on the site. You cannot specify an url or upload pictures as far as I see.
It is still in beta, one can,t expect much from this service.
I’ve used it numerous times the past… 3-6months and it’s NEVER found a single image.
blah, I’ve tried it way more and I’ve always had *some* hits, and there were times I had 200+ hits, so it does work, their database just isn’t very large yet (1 billion images I believe, which sound like a lot, but it really isn’t)
However it does work, and it works splendidly!