Last updated on 9 December 2022
If you are afraid that your pictures might get stolen, you don’t need to worry anymore. Image plagiarism can indeed ruin your SEO score and your ranking position.
It used to be very difficult to find image plagiarism in the past as there was no technology to help you with it. Today, people take image plagiarism lightly and don’t hesitate to download an image they link without the owner’s permission.
Today we have reverse image search technology to find similar images on the internet. As the name tells us, reverse image search is the search technique that involves searching by image instead of text.
Today, many websites, search engines, and applications provide accessible reverse photo search facilities. So you should try this technique and find stolen pictures.
Best platforms to find out if someone is stealing your pictures
Today modern technology and tools can help you find out who is stealing your images.
1. Google Reverse Image Search
Google Image Search is a popular platform that can help you find image plagiarism. The image search extension of Google has been there in the digital market for the last two decades. In the past, it was only used to find relevant images.
How to use Google Reverse Image Search
- To find out who is stealing your images, you have to search by image.
- You can enter the image as input by using the camera icon in the search bar of Google images.
- Google scans your input image and compares it with the ones indexed in its database. You can find website information in seconds using the same images as yours.
2. Duplichecker Reverse Image Search
You can find image plagiarism with the help of Google images and other search engines having image extensions. If you want your image data to be secure and still want to find out who is stealing your pictures, you can use online reverse image search utilities to find similar images.
These third-party reverse image search sites are free and very easy to use. Also, know that these have collaborations with multiple search engines so that you can find image-relevant results from not only Google but also from other sources. You can search by image or URLs with reverse image search.
It would analyze the image and the contents. It would simply compare with the database of multiple search engines. It is easy to find out who may be stealing your images.
What to do if someone is found stealing your visual content?
Reverse Image Search has created a lot of ease for people who want to find out whether their images are plagiarized.
Check if they have credited you
If you find your image on another website without your permission, you can open the website with which the image has been credited with a link. You can manually check whether or not your site has been given credit to the source.
If you don’t find any link to your site, you can contact the site owner and ask them to give you proper credits. Alternatively, if you don’t want your image on another website, you can ask them to remove it.
It’s usually better to ask for credits, though, as you’ll get a free backlink from the site that is using your photo, and if the site that’s using your photo is particularly good, then the backlink will be worth someone else using your photo.
Take legal action
If the person or the website management team doesn’t give you credit or refuses to remove the image from their site, you can choose to take legal action and prepare a Takedown Notice for the culprit’s website. The legal action, however, would be costly, so you need to be prepared for it.
Place a copyright notice with Google
Google allows you to do an application form to inform them if someone is violating your copyright or trademark. You can easily find this by typing your style of request on Google.
So this is how easy it is to find similar images stolen from your website and used without credit.
FAQ
What can I do to prevent someone from stealing my photos?
There are many ways you can do this! The most effective way to prevent someone from stealing your photos online is to watermark your property or register the copyright to your work.
Watermarking is usually the most effective way simply because it’s free. If you watermark your work effectively, then it makes it very difficult for someone to steal any of your photos.
Conclusion
Today, finding stolen images over the web has become a hassle-free task due to the availability of reverse image search facilities.
Picture finder tools are a blessing for graphic designers and photographers who invest ample time in creating unique visual content. Plagiarists can randomly pick your image from the website or social platforms, use it as their own, and harvest all the appreciation.
You can avoid this by taking essential measures against copycats after hunting them down with a picture finder. If your images contain copyrights, you can bring the plagiarist to court and demand compensation. Here is a guide to preventing people from stealing your images.
If you don’t want to get involved in legal procedures but still want to take action, you can ask the sources to provide credits and show you as the creator. Stealing is undoubtedly a crime, but it’s a widespread activity over the web. You shouldn’t leave this matter unresolved, as it’s essential for every content creator to get recognition for his/her work.
In short, the reverse image search facilities make the identification of stolen pictures quite easy for everyone and help users to track their images on daily basis to ensure that no one is using them without prior consent.
