Bing reverse image search is a new Visual Search feature by Microsoft Bing search engine that lets you reverse search any image for specific information. Visual Search allows you to search with a picture instead of text.
Reverse searching an image lets you find the source or origin of that image across the web. There are some extension, add-on and apps that you can download and install on your phone for image searching and matching with Bing Images.
What is Bing Reverse Image Search?
Bing reverse image search is a content-based photo retrieval query technique by Microsoft Bing search engine by which a sample image is submitted to CBIR system that formulates a mathematical query centered on the sample image for data retrieval based on its algorithms.
See: Instagram Reverse Image Search
Working of Bing Reverse Image Search
Looking for the best reverse image search, you can use most browsers including Safari, Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox to access https://bing.com/images and perform bing reverse image search free. That being said, I will show you an excellent way how to use bing reverse image search api on your smartphone or tablet.
An image finder tool, like Bing reverse image search (which is similar to Yandex reverse image search) checks your uploaded image against billions of images across the internet to find the sources where similar images are published online.
Millions of users online including travelers, photographers, bloggers, and webmasters around the globe use Bing reverse image search every day to find similar images or higher resolution images for personal or professional use.
Related Reading: Yahoo Images
The Importance of using Bing Reverse Image Search
Bing rolls our reverse image search and here are some of the benefits of using its Visual Search feature.
- It helps you get an image details.
- As an image source locator or finder (just like yahoo reverse image search), it helps you to track down any image.
- It lets you look for a particular location in any image.
- Search for images from varying sources.
- Helps you obtain higher resolution of similar or related images.
Further Reading:
Yandex Reverse Image Search
Image Search Catfish
How To Do an Image Search on Bing in 6 Steps with Pictures
Visual Search by Bing offers a streamlined version of what Facebook image search offers. It displays multiple sizes of an image you’re finding. The Visual Search feature is easy to use.
Let’s look at how to use Bing’s Visual Search feature.
Step 1: Go to Bing website at “bing.com/images”.
The Visual Search tool is displayed at the right of the search box at the screen top when you click the camera icon (search using an image).
Step 2: Click on the Drag an image here or browse or Paste image or URL or Click a sample image to try it option on Bing.
Bing has made it easy to quickly find this option.
Step 3: Bring up the “Similar images” and Pages with this tabs.
Step 5: Check the different sizes of the image you choose.
Step 6: Look for an image online through a reverse image search.
When you click on the camera icon, it drops down “Visual Search” which opens a dialog box and you can either upload a picture or paste an image URL.
After uploading an image or adding an image URL, Bing displays the different sizes of the image on a search results page.
Unlike image search catfish, Bing gives a clean look by omitting site descriptions. It displays the various sizes of the picture at the top of the screen.
If you are a writer or webmaster you can find the original location of an image.
It helps you to find plagiarized images being used without authorization.
Important Read: Yahoo Reverse Image Search
Top 7 Bing features of the Bing search engine that we can’t do without
For those of you who have installed the Bing reverse image search api onto your mobile phone or iPhone, I will try to highlight the benefits of each feature or what it does. Bing features are:
1. Bing Video Hover
When it comes to searching video content functionality, Bing has had an edge up against Google. Bing eliminates copycat videos by allowing you to hover any video and preview a short clip of it. Bing allows video content to pop up within the search result page, providing an easy way to get back to your search results, and also saves bandwidth by not loading a new page each time.
2. Bing Snapshot
When you are doing search Bing automatically provide you with a small “snapshot” of basic information that you can click to explore more about your search query. Snapshots also include quick links to points of interest, such as quotes, news, biographies, imagery, etc.
3. Bing Saves
Bing Saves is a feature that Microsoft is beta testing to provide easy bookmarking that can keep them saved safe up in the cloud.
4. Bing Timeline
Bing Timeline allows users to look up famous individual and automatically shows key events throughout their lifetime. This timeline displays important stats including family, companies/organizations they may have founded as well as the person’s lifespan.
5. Bing Computations
Bing search allows you to perform computations by type in your math query to see instant results.
The search engine also provides a touch friendly calculator that you can use for your complex math problem and equation.
6. Bing Rewards
Bing Rewards is a program by Bing search engine that awards points to users who perform searches and completes daily tasks. You can sign up for Bing Rewards at bing.com/rewards
You can easily earn points and cash in for special prizes including 60 minutes of Skype credit, a $5 Amazon Gift Card, 100 GB of OneDrive Storage, a $5 Starbucks Gift Card, 1 month of Hulu Plus, and much more.
7. Bing Visual Search formerly called “Image Match”
Does Bing have reverse image search?
Well…
Google has had search by image feature for years, but Microsoft Bing has now integrated same into its own search engine.
How do I find the original source of an image online?
Let us say that you have a small image that you found on the internet a while back.
If you find a photo on the web or have an image on your PC or Android phone that you would like to “re-find” on the internet, you can use Visual Search to do so.
Bing Visual Search can help you find a larger and high-resolution copy of that same exact picture.
To use Bing Visual Search formerly Image Match, simply head over to Bing.com and click on the “Images” tab on the main menu navigation.
Then, next to the search box, click “Visual Search” button. You can either upload a picture file directly from your PC or paste in an existing image URL to start the search.
No need for Boolean logic or search key words – just point Bing to your image file and you are set.
How do I search an image from my gallery? You can also perform search by image with your android phone using api or browser app on your mobile device.
Features of Bing Reverse Image Search
Bing introduces Visual Search to help you find the right picture.
When you are searching for an image on bing.com/images, you come across hundreds of them while sorting through.
Sometimes you find that your choice image has an odd dimension, watermarked or low resolution. It forces you to scrolling through the results page again.
The Bing team at Microsoft has introduced a new feature, Visual Search, to eliminate this hassle.
When you are browsing images, find the Visual Search button at the bottom of the image to match the selected image in a few clicks.
When you click the button, Bing will show a list of different size images that you can narrow down by size.
If you want to see all images, click on “View all sizes”.
Using Image URL
While browsing on the web, you can grab the URL of any image that you’d want to find matches of, click the Visual Search link next to the camera icon within the search box on bing.com/images, and paste that URL for matched results.
Not just with images that you find on the web, you can also use the Visual Search feature with your own collection of popular images on your iPad, mobile phone, PC or tablet.
All you need to do is upload the image directly to bing.com/images, using your computer browser such as mozilla firefox, safari, chrome, etc and Bing will match the results.
Does Bing have Image Search?
Yes…
Bing’s image search is one of my favorite Bing tools, and its features are helpful to power users and underscore Bing’s engineering excellence.
Find any picture on the web faster with Visual Search. Visual Search allows you to search with a picture instead of text.
Try Visual Search on Bing
Search with a picture instead of text. You can Drag an image here or browse OR Paste image or URL or Click a sample image to try it to open up Similar images and Pages with this tabs on the image search results page.
How to Search Images by Size on Bing
You can search Bing for images for specific sizes.
This feature is not new, Google has search by image feature that support different size images and other sites like TinEye, Yandex, Yahoo, Reddit, and Facebook let you perform reverse searches using a picture.
The Visual Search once clicked from the three-dots icon on each image automatically displays different image sizes to choose from and matching the sample picture with billions of images on the web.
This helps you examine the visibility on different size images and look for related images on the result page.
You can use the visual properties of the image to find other versions of the same image in another size.
From the Images tab, you can click Visual Search to perform more complex image searches, rather than a word or phrase searching.
Bing Reverse Image Search Alternatives
Google was the first search engine to offer reverse image search that lets users to enter an image URL or upload a photo to see where it’s available online.
Apart from Bing Search Engine and Google, you can search by image or its URL to get similar photos from Yahoo, Facebook, Yandex, and TinEye with Reverse Image Search. You can explore personalized image results based on your favorites, interests, and trending searches.
Cntlq (Ctrlq.org) allows you to perform Google Reverse Image Search for Mobile. Reverse Google Image Search will help you find the original source of photographs, memes and profile pictures on your Android mobile phone, iPhone or iPad.
Read: Google Reverse Image Search
Bing also offers the same reverse image search feature with API that lets people reverse search any picture to find the origin or source of that image.
Let’s compare the results between Bing Images and Google Images and see which one outperforms the other.
Read: Facebook Image Search
Read Also: Facebook Reverse Image Search
Bing Images Vs. Google Images
Both Bing Images and Google Images are widely accepted by most users. I’m going to look at which search engine offers the more features, superior results with less duplicates, and better design.
Comparing Their Reverse Image Search Results
Let search for “cat” on both Bing Images and Google Images and compare their results.
Bing Images retrieved decent results but with some challenges like a few duplicate images and clip art images.
In contrast, Google Images returned only unique images and photos with no clip art.
It’s likely that users won’t wait to see duplicate images and clip art images.
In general, Google Images displays no duplicate.
Which has Better Results
| Bing Images | Google Images |
| Viewing An Image – Click an image and Bing takes you to a page with a small version of the image. You can flip through other images in the search results. To view the full size image requires an additional click. | Viewing An Image – Google Image takes you to the full size image directly in a single click. It doesn’t allow you to flip through the other images. You can click back button and select another image. |
| Sort By Subject – Bing cannot sort the search results by subject. Unless you are performing additional searches and views the results on separate pages. | Sort by Subject – Google images has the ability to sort the search results by their subjects and helps organize them. |
| Similar Images – Although Image Match (now called Visual Search) brings up similar images in the search results, but Bing Images does not have similar images feature per single viewed image from the results page. | Similar Images – Google Images allows you to hover an image and click similar images link that displays visually similar images. |
| Search Options – Bing offers search tools that you can use to search for images by their color, size, or dimensions. You can also look for clip art, line drawings, faces, or photographs. Bing does not have search option for the past week or time range option or images relating to a recent event | Search Options – Google Images offers all options as Bing as well as search for only images from the past week, images relating to recent event and time range option. Google image identify search makes Google the clear winner and helps you identify photographs and faces quickly. |
| Uploading An Image – Bing Images support uploading an image. | Uploading An Image – Using Google Images, you can provide image URL or upload an image from your desktop computer. You can click the camera icon in the search box to drag an image on the page to upload it. Google shows you similar images on the web and what the image is and the web pages that contain it. |
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What are the benefits of Bing Reverse Image Search?
Bing Reverse Image search helps you identify an image file that you have, and if you’re not sure what the image is or where it’s from. It’s Visual Search helps match your image against billions of images on the web and show you similar images and its original source.
Conclusion
Just like search by image android, the Bing search engine integrated the Visual Search feature that lets you do reverse image searches using a picture uploaded on Bing search engine rather than typing a keyword.
Bing started with its similar images feature, infinite scrolling and better laid out search results.
Over to you
Have you use bing reverse image search before and what results did you have in terms of duplicate images or clean similar images that matched your image searched file?
Leave a comment below and let us know
