Suppose you have posted some photos on a photo sharing site, and you're curious to see if someone has absconded with them. What you need is a way to perform a reverse image search--where a smart search engine looks for a photo by detecting identical content within the image itself, rather than keying on file names or metadata, which are easily changed.
That might sound like science fiction, and in fact it's pretty close. But I've found a Web site out there, TinEye, that can actually perform reverse images searches today.
To use TinEye, you can upload a photo from your computer or point the site to a Web page that already hosts the photo. TinEye then returns a list of sites using the same image.
TinEye is far from perfect. It often identifies photos that are similar to--but not exactly the same as--the source image. Worse, TinEye's database of photos represents only a fraction of what's available on the entire Internet--so if you get zero results, that doesn't mean your photo isn't being repurposed out there somewhere.
Other Tools
+ Similar Images with Bing
Hover over any thumbnail image and click the "similar images" link. In the left column note several options to narrow and focus your search results. Bing also offers a "visual search" beta.
+ Similar Images with Google
Run an image search and click the "similar images" link below each thumbnail. Note the "Show Options" link located below the search box, left side of page.
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