If you have an image in your family history photo collection, you can use Google Image
Search to find more details about that picture. You may not always find out who is in the
image, but you might learn a lot about what. And today, I'm going to show you all about
it. Now, you can search images as if you would search normal Google by filtering to image,
or you can search Google Images using a photo of your own. It's particularly handy when
you're trying to write about an ancestor, and you don't know what their clothing style
is, what their hairstyle might be. It's also handy when you are trying to understand landmarks
or silverware, or china. You can drag just about any picture in, and they will do a search
on Google. So. How do you get to it? There's two ways you can actually access the image.
First, you can click on the image and grab a URL from a website. For the fun of it. Let's
say that you can across this image online, and you didn't know anything about it. Now
granted, this website does a good job of explaining it. But, right click, copy the image address.
And paste the image and search by image. And then Google is going to give me text-based
returns as well as some other images to help me figure out what that might be. So let's
say you upload an image to your own website and you want to know more details about it.
You can grab the URL in that way. Another reverse image search actually involves grabbing
an image. You click on the image icon and navigate to your folder that has your images.
Or if you're on a desktop or really handy with mobile. You can open up your folder.
Make sure that enough space to do some dragging. Hold down your left mouse button. And then
drag it onto the window workspace. And then you are gonna see this box right here. You
can't really see it right now because where the Windows Explorer is. But it does say,
"Drop your image right here." Let go. And then Google is going to start searching for
some images. Now, the gallery of potential images is down here. But they are also going
to give you a couple of potential websites to help you know more about the image. Let's
actually look at this image. And there are a number of things that you can see. Particularly
when I zoom in. So we see a man who is walking. And you see a couple. You see a car. And then
you see this structure. Well, here's the hack that I promised you. Because Google didn't
really give me anything other than this is kind of a snapshot. And notice that in the
very similar images, they are snapshots of lots of different times and places. And it's
not really helping me understand this image. So what you're gonna wanna do is to use a
program where you can crop your image. So I'm going to open the Paint program on Windows.
I know there is something similar on Apple. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to select
the narrow location that I want to crop to. And I'm going to crop this image. Now, you
can zoom in. And you can see that there is a castle and some people walking in front
of the car. If I wanted to focus in on just the car. Then I can repeat the process. Or
I can just do this and see if we can pick up that structure. So I'm going to "Save As"
my mystery image. And then I'm going to take it over to Google. And I'm going to repeat
the image search process. So, I'm back at the Google Image Search home page, and instead
of clicking on the icon. I'm going to do the drag and drop process. And now we can see
that a little bit better. Drop your image here, and it's going to do a search. And now
they're talking about the car, but I'm starting to see that castle. And we have Cincinnati's,
Elsinore Arch. But this image wasn't from Cincinnati. My ancestors are really from Columbus.
So when I type in Columbus. I have better luck with this image. So I click on "View
Similar". And now I have the Armory Building. And it looks a lot, very much like the castle
that I showed you earlier. Before we continue, I want to make sure you get my free guide
for 10 Online Genealogy Resources you have to try. Google Images is just one of them.
So make sure you find out the rest. Click the link in the description. Let's do another
image search. I'm going to do this one with my grandfather and his horse. Perhaps we can
find out what type of horse he had. So I'm going to drag and drop into the Google Image
Search. And right now, I'm getting a halter and lots of images from the same time period.
And so I can learn a little about types of cowboys and who is riding a horse. It always
worth a try. Sometimes you're going to get lucky. And sometimes not so much. Now I'm
going to do a picture of a person. And let's see if we get lucky. And this picture didn't
find matches for my grandfather. But it did say peaked cap. "The peaked cap, service cap,
forage cap, barracks cover or combination cap.." So we can actually learn about the
cap. That was what they were able to pick up on for my grandfather. But it does fit
with a lot of these other pictures for this time period. You can also do a drag and drop
from a search results page. Let's say you want to override that first one. You can drag
an image on your search results page, and you don't have to keep going back to the home
page of Google Images. But say you didn't know what this television was. It turns out
that Google was able to figure out that something very similar. And we're starting to see something
very similar to the television. Particularly that one. So let's say you have an object
in your family home. Like this bell that my grandmother had. And the first that Google
notices is that this is made of ceramic. And then you can see visually similar images.
Russ collectible bell August. And that looks very similar to what my grandmother had. Notice
it has the flower and the month. So I could actually learn more about that there by going
to the website. So you can do a reverse image search. You can crop to different parts of
your images and search that image to get better results. You can add your image and then put
keywords beside it to help you narrow things down. Now I'll be honest, a lot of the photos
that I have in my own collection. I don't have a lot of luck with reverse image searches.
I do have better luck if I drag and drop them onto Pinterest. Believe it or not. If you
want to learn about the basics of using Pinterest for genealogy, check out this playlist that's
right here. If if you want to see another video about using Google Image Search, check
out this link right here.