Facebook Image Search: How do I know if a profile image appears more than once?
Facebook is monstrous, with more than 2 billion monthly users at the beginning of 2020. With this incredible amount of people on the platform, it is a great tool for keeping in touch with friends and family, connecting with communities, but not everything is rosy in Mark Zuckerberg platform and today we’re going to show you how a Facebook tool can reveal if an image appears in more than one profile. Very useful to unmask con artists, or simply people who pretend to be others.
But this tool is also used to find out if someone is using your images, and also to discover the source of a viral meme.
Before we get to the heart of the issue of how to do an image search on Facebook, there are a few things we need to clarify. This search will only cover public or visible profiles for your account. For example, if you block someone on Facebook, that person will not see your images through a search. Makes sense, right?
With that clarified, there are two ways to search Facebook images: by file names and by the images themselves. Results may vary, but both methods are easy and can be done in just minutes.
What kind of images can we search for?
If you can use the file name method, it will work with almost any image. File names are unique for upload. So, regardless of what is in the image, they will be able to locate the image.
To do a true reverse image search on Facebook with just the image, it can be difficult to find a perfect match. Generally, sharp, unique images are better for reverse searches, and the higher the resolution, the better.
It shouldn’t have to be, but Facebook image searches are not the same as facial recognition software, so don’t expect miracles.
Facebook image search: the file name method
The first method of searching for a Facebook image only works if the file name has not been changed since the first download from the platform or if the image itself is already hosted on Facebook. When looking at the file name or URL, they will see the text fb and a long sequence of numbers, as seen above.
This sequence of numbers is the key to conduct a search of Facebook images, as it can be used to find the profile for which it was published. There will be three sequences of numbers separated by underscore, but what we want is in the middle. This is the profile ID of the image.
Now enter the URL https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= followed by the ID copied from the image. This will take you directly to the profile, as long as it is public or visible to your account.
Reverse Facebook image search: the Google method
The second method we’ll describe uses Google’s complex image search algorithm. If you’ve ever used Google’s reverse image search, all of this should be familiar.
There are two ways to do this. The first works if the image has already been brought online. Just right-click and select Search Google by image. This will open a new tab with matching image results from across the web, which can be limited to just Facebook results if you add a website: facebook.com in the search box.
When the image is on your computer instead of online, you can perform the same function by accessing the image.google.com, and click on the camera icon, and then upload an image and Choose File. We emphasize that, if they are on the smartphone, it may be necessary to switch to the desktop version of the site for the option to appear. After the results appear, add a website: facebook.com in search to find profiles with matching images on Facebook.
We talked about Google, but most modern search engines can do this image search. THE Bing is a great alternative, and the Russian search engine Yandex it can also work wonders when Google image search doesn’t give you what you’re looking for.
Other methods
If you want to explore the Web further and look for an image on sites other than Facebook, there are some services that can help you. One of the most popular is the TinEye, specialized in reverse image searches. This will allow the user to know where the image is located on different websites, including Amazon, Flickr, Twitter, and, of course, on Facebook.
