How to find anything
Images & Files: Search Guides
Find where a photo came from, and see what a web page used to say. Reverse image search and web archives answer most where-did-this-come-from questions, for free.
Most questions about a photo or a web page come down to where it came from and when. Reverse image search engines answer the first, and web archives answer the second. Both are free, and neither is complete, so try more than one.
Guides
What to try first
- For a photo, run it through Google Lens, then TinEye and Bing. They index different parts of the web.
- Crop the image to the main subject and search again. A crop often finds matches the full image misses.
- For a page that has changed or vanished, paste its address into the Wayback Machine.
- If the Wayback Machine has no copy, try archive.today, which holds snapshots people requested.
Which guide do I need?
- You think a dating or social media profile uses someone else's photos: How to Reverse Image Search a Photo. How to find the original and the signs of a fake profile.
- You want to find the source or photographer of an image: How to Reverse Image Search a Photo. Finding the earliest copy, and why that doesn't always mean the original.
- A page you need has been edited or taken down: How to Find an Old Version of a Website. The Wayback Machine and archive.today, step by step.
- You're looking for Google's cached copy of a page: How to Find an Old Version of a Website. Google retired its cache in 2024; the guide covers what to use instead.
- You want to know who is behind a website, not just what it said: How to Find Out Who Owns a Domain Name. Domain lookups show the registrar and dates.
Coming next
We're writing these next. They'll appear here once they're checked:
- How to find a PDF on a specific site