Search by photo of a person or any other image in Google and Yandex - how it works

Updated January 31, 2022 158 Author: Dmitry Petrov
Hello, dear readers of the KtoNaNovenkogo.ru blog. Until recently, search engines could only search by words. No, of course, there were services such as Google and Yandex images , but until a certain period they operated only with the words that the user entered in the search bar.

How does image search differ from regular search?

The search engine did not understand what exactly was shown in the photos that it returned in the results, but was only guided by the words that appeared in the text next to this image (on those pages of the sites where it found them) or that were written in its alt attributes or title (img tag). In fact, for the search engine, the picture was a “black box”, which he could judge only by indirect signs (its description).

As a result, the query “blue chicken” could show “pink elephants”. Of course, such errors in photo searches were corrected manually (by so-called assessors who looked through the results with their eyes), but this was done only for the most frequently entered queries. And that's not the main thing.

The important thing is that you couldn’t show a search engine a poor quality picture so that it would find you the original in high resolution, or show it a photo of a person (read about searching for people on VKontakte, Facebook and other social networks), and it would tell you that this is such and such an artist, poet, musician or just a person described on at least one page on the Internet.

Sometimes a photo may be one of many in a series (photo report, photo instruction, different angles) and you may want to find all the other images from the same series to understand the essence. How to do it? What words should you type into the search bar? Here's another example. You saw a sofa in a photo and wanted to know where exactly the same one was sold and at what price.

A difficult task, or even unsolvable (to a first approximation), if the query is entered in words. Here you need to somehow upload the picture to the search engine and the latter must understand what exactly is depicted on it and try to give you answers to all the questions posed just above.

Until recently, image search could not do this, but now it can. Searching by sample image (photo or any other image) is now supported by both leading search engines in Russia - Google and Yandex. Moreover, the latter learned to do this only quite recently, but nevertheless learned.

If you try to dive into the full depth of the principles of this action, then most of us are unlikely to find it interesting. In this regard, I really liked the explanation of the Yandex representative.

The picture is divided into small fragments, which can be called virtual words. Well, then the process follows the same logic as a regular search. The same set of visual words is searched, and the closer it is to the user's uploaded image, the higher it will appear in the search results.

Looking for information from a phone image

Have you seen an unknown insect on the wall of your house and urgently need to check whether it is poisonous? A handsome guy or girl wrote on a social network, but you doubt the authenticity of the account? Even with only your cell phone nearby, you can quickly find answers using the app and photos.

Download all applications from the Play Store or App Store.

Google Chrome

Go to the website with the photo. I decided to check my VK avatar.

Hold your finger on it until a menu appears. Select “Find this image on Google.”

We enjoy the results obtained. I once published a post with this photo. The program found her.

In Yandex.Browser we repeat the same thing.

To search by images online, you can download a separate program, Search Google Using Image.

PictPicks

PictPics does not have its own search algorithm. Uses Google. In the application, it is easy to find a similar drawing, save the request to history, and filter the results by color, type, time and size.

Open PictPicks by clicking on it.

Call up the menu by pressing the three stripes on the left side.

Use the camera icon to take a photo of the object or send it from your phone memory by clicking on the square next to it.

Flip, flip the photo if necessary, and start searching by clicking on the magnifying glass in the upper right corner.

We look at the search results and save the desired image by clicking on it with your finger.

The menu with actions is called up by three dots on the right.

Search By Image

Search By Image is an application that quickly searches for similar images via Google from a mobile phone. Suitable for those who don't like Chrome. It takes up only 3.75 MB.

Open the application through the smartphone menu.

Click on the plus sign in the lower right corner to add the source.

You can add a photo directly from the camera by clicking on the camera icon. To download the source from the gallery, you need to use the square icon below.

We are given the opportunity to edit a photo: crop, rotate, flip. To get started, click on the circle with a magnifying glass.

We study the results that Google was able to please us with. It was a home photo that is not on the Internet, so it’s understandable why he only showed similar ones.

Pros: easy to use, quick to search, lightweight.

CamFind

Take photos, upload pictures to find all the information: location, prices in online stores, copies, similar files. You can share a post on Facebook, Twitter directly from the application. CamFind is available in 2 versions: for Android (Play Store) and iOS (App Store).

We photograph a thing or person with a camera. Or upload a photo from your phone’s memory by clicking on the plus at the top.

We wait.

We study search results. It includes sites, links to products, news, articles and pages where something similar to the source was seen.

Plus: finds places, products, news, articles.

AliExpress

Have you seen a cool item from a friend or want to buy a Chinese copy of a branded item for less? Install the AliExpress app and use the graphical search from your phone.

Find the program in the menu and launch it.

Click on the black camera icon in the right corner.

We have three options:

1. Take a photo and send if we use the red button.
2. Send the finished image from the gallery by clicking the square in the lower left corner.
3. Scan the barcode in the right corner.

If you are uploading a photo from the gallery, you need to mark it and click the checkbox to send.

View the list that AliExpress provided in response to your request. I have a 100% match.

How does Google photo search work?

Let's look at all this using the examples of Yandex and Google. Let's start with the largest search engine in the world. In order to get into the holy of holies, you can click on the “Pictures” button on the regular search page, or you can immediately follow this link:

Click on the camera icon located in the right area of ​​the Google search bar. You are given two options for uploading the desired picture or photograph into the search - specify its address (it can be copied by right-clicking on the photo and selecting the option “copy image URL”, or something similar in meaning) on ​​the Internet or upload from your computer.

In the example shown, I simply indicated the URL of the image that I found on the official Wikipedia website (what is it?).

In the search results I got this picture:

Google told me that the photo shows Albert Einstein in his youth, and also suggested that I look at the same image, but in a larger or smaller size. You can also look at similar pictures, and under them you can see the web pages where this graphic file takes place.

In the search bar, you can enter clarifying words, for example, if you want to find out about all the vicissitudes of this person’s fate, then enter the word “biography”. As a result, pages will be found on which the search found the picture you uploaded and on which there is a biography of the person depicted in it.

I mentioned two main ways to upload an image to Google search - provide a link to the graphic file or upload it from your computer. But for Google browser users there is also a third way to activate this action.

If you are in Google Chrome , then simply move your mouse to the picture or photograph on the page that interests you for one reason or another (for example, you want to find out whether your virtual friend posted a true photo on VKontakte or is it some famous person imprinted).

As a result, a context menu will appear and you will need to select “Find this image in Google” from it. After this, you will find yourself in the already familiar Google image search window with all the collected information about your friend’s photo.

Search by image files in Yandex

Quite recently, the leader of the RuNet search market acquired a similar tool. They called the new technology “Computer Vision” and gave it the code name “Siberia”. In this case, the picture is divided into visual words (areas of contrast change, borders, etc.) and the entire database available in Yandex is searched for the presence of this set of visual words in other images.

And only then those in which these visual words are in the same order as in the original uploaded picture are selected. In practice, this action looks very similar to Google - in the right area of ​​the photo search from Yandex there is an icon that you will need to click on to download a graphic file.

Although, if you have the URL of the desired image, you can paste it directly into the graphical search bar and click on the “Find” button, as shown in the previous screenshot.

You can find out the URL of an image on a web page by right-clicking on it and selecting the context menu item “Copy image address” or similar (different names are used in different browsers).

If you need to upload a picture to the search from your computer, then click on the camera icon and click on the “Select file” button. The search results will look something like this:

As you can see, from them you can also quite easily understand that the photo shows the great Einstein, but on Google I somehow liked the design of the results more. It is possible that Yandex will still need to work on this. Photos found in Yandex can also be sorted by size and type of graphic files (by format).

What’s noteworthy is that Yandex keeps a history of your searches, including images. If necessary, you can view it or delete it if you want to remove materials that compromise you. Read how to do this in the article about how to clear history in Yandex.

Google Lens can identify places

Google Lens is an image recognition technology that allows you to identify objects using visual analysis based on neural networks. Until recently, this system was available only to owners of Google Pixel smartphones. Now the Google Lens application can be downloaded absolutely free from the Play Market and installed on a mobile phone or tablet running Android OS.

Google Lens allows you to explore the surrounding area, find out interesting facts about attractions, names of animals and plants, as well as scan and translate texts. In order to find a place using a photo, you need to do the following:

1. Install app.
2. Launch it and upload the desired photo.
3. Point the camera at the desired location without focusing on a specific object. A few seconds later, Google Lens algorithms will select photos of similar places.

This way, any owner of an Android device can easily find out where the photo was taken.

Search for a person by photo

A separate topic is searching for people by their photos. There are a lot of personal photos collected on the Internet (mainly thanks to social networks) and it is often easier to find a person by his photo than by his full name and other identifying information.

The most obvious way is to use the Yandex and Google services described above . Next to each similar photo found there will be a link to the page where this photo is posted. Most often, these will be accounts on some social networks, where you can find other useful information (contacts, address, telephone).

A more complicated way (if search engines do not help) is to use special services to search for people (using photos and other data) . The most popular of them:

1. Findclone is a paid, but very high-quality service for searching photos using the VKontakte social network. There is a free demo mode. VKontakte is one of the most popular social networks in RuNet, so the chances of finding the right person are very high.

   You can watch a specific example of searching for a person in this service in this video:

2. PimEyes is a paid service that searches all over the Internet. There is a free demo mode. Here the chances of finding a person based on his photo will be very high.
3. VK.watch is a free service that has a large amount of archived data from their social network VKontakte. Those. You can also search by accounts that have already been closed.
4. Search4faces is a free service that searches using photos from the social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.
5. Face tracker is a paid analogue of the legendary Findface, which was closed.
6. FaceLeakBot is a telegram bot that implements the function of searching for a person by photo. For more information about working with it, watch this video:

Why look for the original source of the photo?

The search may be necessary for work or personal interests. The most common reasons why people look for the original source:

• the need to indicate the author of the photograph;
• checking the accuracy of information found on the Internet;
• If you need a photo in maximum resolution.

Also, services for finding the original source help you find your own pictures, taken without permission by other users or sites. Once you find the thieves, you can remind them of copyright law and demand payment.

Search for similar photos in Tingai and products based on photos in Taobao

In general, in most cases the services described should be enough for you, but it’s possible that Tinay will come in handy someday. Here, again, you are offered a choice of two ways to download a sample image - by entering the URL address or directly from your computer.

This service is well suited for searching for similar photos or individual components from which it was assembled. As you can see from the screenshot below, Tinay found the sources of the original images that made up the sample.

The Chinese search engine Taobao has the ability to search for products based on the photo you uploaded. As a result, you will not only receive the addresses of those online stores where you can buy it, but you will also be able to choose the most profitable offer for you.

True, to work with it you need to know Chinese. However, there are several sites that allow you to search for products by photo through the Taobao database, but at the same time they have a Russian-language interface and the search results are also translated into Russian.

The results of searching for a product by photo look like this:

Search by images using SearchEngineReports

Each search engine provides its own image search tool. But to view the results you will have to visit each service separately. Which is not very convenient and takes a long time. Therefore, it is better to use SearchEngineReports.

*click on the picture to open it full size in a new window

The tool allows you to find images and view results in six search engines at once: Google, Yandex, Baidu, Sogou and TinEye. The reference sample can be downloaded from a computer and smartphone, from Dropbox, and indicate its URL. And also find pictures by keyword.

*click on the picture to open it full size in a new window

After loading the image, click on the “Search for similar images” button and get links leading to the results of six search engines at once.

In addition, SearchEngineReports provides several more valuable tools for working with images:

1. Image Compression is an image compression tool.
2. Favicon Generator – website favicon generator.
3. Image Resizer – cropping images.
4. Convert to JPG – converter of graphic files to JPEG format.
5. PNG to JPG, JPG to PNG – transfer of images from one format to another.
6. RGB to Hex – converts colors specified using the RGB model into hexadecimal number system.

In general, SearchEngineReports is a convenient and free image search and editing engine that is in demand among webmasters, designers and ordinary users.

HashPhotos is a photo editor that can calculate geolocation

HashPhotos photo editor and manager is available for download in the App Store. This is a small utility that allows you to pinpoint the exact location where you took the photo.

How to calculate geolocation using Hash Photos:

1. Open the Gallery through the application.
2. Select the desired photo.
3. Swipe up.
4. The program will show the street and city directly on the map, and also display the shooting time.

To open a photo in Google Maps, click on the "Share" button. After switching to the Google service, you will be able to get directions to the place marked in the photo.