A photo is enough to find a person online, but a reverse face search can do a lot more. Face search engines can show account profiles or (celebrity) lookalikes, and paired with artificial intelligence, they can even estimate someone’s age, attractiveness or BMI.
Let’s explore some of these face search engines to see what they can tell us about you or your friends.
1. Google Image Search: Reverse Face Search
Did you know that you can search Google by images? Instead of keywords, you can use image to find similar images. Click on the camera icon to search by image. You can either paste the image URL or upload an image and Google will find matching images.
Also you can search for faces on google by just adding a small code.
When you go to Google Images Search, enter your query, press Enter, and then add “&imgtype=face” (without the quotes), either to the end of the search URL or to another string starting with & right before This will improve search results related to your face.
Once you’ve added the image type to the URL, you’ll also find this option under Tools > Types. Google also offers its own face recognition in Google Photos, which means you can search your photos for people and even pets.
2. FaceCheck.ID: Check photo against online profile
FaceCheck.ID is an AI-powered facial recognition search engine that helps you search people’s social profiles, online accounts, and any criminal records available online.
When you submit a photo, you agree not to confront, harass, stalk, or blackmail any person, or otherwise misuse the information they collect from you using this tool.
In my case, it identified seven photos of me and dozens of lookalikes, some flattering, some less so, such as the person logged on Criminal Radar. Fortunately, even FaceCheck.ID wasn’t very convincing in this match, as it only rated it at 58 points, making it a weak match.
3. Pinterest: Reverse Image Search
Like Google, Pinterest has a reverse image search option that you can use to find similar photos or faces. First, find a suitable Pinterest Pin or create your own by uploading your target photo.
Then, open the Pinterest pin and click the magnifying glass icon in the lower-right corner of the image. Pinterest will now show you similar Pins.
What’s great about Pinterest’s reverse image search is that you can select a portion of the image to refine the results. Simply adjust the selection frame to zone in on one face. In other words, if you used a group photo, you can search for a specific person by placing the frame around their face.
4. PicTriev: Face Recognition
PicTriev goes a step further by actually searching for similar faces. Unfortunately, this feature is limited to look-alikes.
What you do is add a URL or upload a photo in JPG or JPEG format, no larger than 200 KB in size, and the search engine will match celebrity images found online.
For demonstration purposes, I used my own headshot. While PicTriev correctly identified me as highly female, the number one match was Jason Clarke. However, the age estimate of 30 is very flattering.
This works great if you search for a celebrity image.
PicTriev lets you compare the similarity of two faces or estimate whether photos of two faces are the same person or not. Click the meter icon in the top right, upload two photos, choose Similarity or Identity, and let PicTriev calculate it.
5. TinEye: Reverse Image Search
TinEye’s reverse image search works almost like Google’s. You can upload an image or paste a URL and search it. TinEye doesn’t support any more search operators, making it both simple and basic.
In my testing, TinEye found three results, one of which was not included by Google because the site expired years ago. Furthermore, it missed a new result that was picked up by its older brother. To me, this indicates that TinEye’s search index is largely out of date.
Unlike Google, TinEye links directly to the pages where it found the images, and it skips similar images.
6. PimEyes: Face Search
Similar to Google’s reverse face search, PimEyes uses images and facial recognition to find similar faces across more than 10 million websites. Demos using celebrity faces like Angelina Jolie or Zac Efron look promising.
For example, you can search for Jennifer Aniston’s face using four different photos at once. PimEyes found the original photos, as well as other shots of Aniston.
Curiously, while the app finds the original photos used for the search, the similarity is only scored at around 70 percent. Shouldn’t it be closer to 100 percent?