Some tips for using
Reverse Image Search:
Google is usually the first try, but
TinyEye, although lacking some of the features of Google RIS, is an excellent alternative and saved my day many times in the past. I noticed that Google RIS performs poorly for example when you have only a black & white, or a color-modified copy of the photo. Google will often fail to find anything, or will only show similarly colored images.
I usually start searching in Google, when nothing is found, I try TinyEye. It often happened that TinyEye showed me a colored version of a B&W photo, or an edited version that Google did not see, but it still did not reveal the original, or the website I was hoping to find. When I then passed the alternative picture from TinyEye back again to Google, it suddenly offered plenty of hits, revealing the information I searched.
I noticed also that the image-URL search does not work always well. It may be perhaps due to the limitation of the search engines bots on certain servers by the robot.txt file, or due to connectivity problems. If the URL search fails, do not give up immediately - it may help saving the image locally, and using the upload search function instead.
This small trick with Google Image Search may perhaps help someone too:
When in a country where the local version of Google (for example google.fr or google.de) overrides the .com version, I found the interface for "all sizes" of an image becomes very user unfriendly. The US version and also some other localized mutations (i.e. google.cz) show a bigger version of an image quickly on the same page via JavaScript, and you can navigate through the list with the arrow keys. But when you click a thumbnail on the unfriendly version (*.fr, *.de and possibly other countries), it opens the target page instead. It is very inconvenient and slowing down the search. I did not find any option in Google settings for it, but when it happens, I simply replace the local extension (i.e. "fr" or "de") in the URL by "us" ("com" does not work, because it automatically reloads the local page again).
When both Google and TinyEye fail, you can try also
KarmaDecay. It searches in the Reddit posts, but at the top it also lists links to other image searches - besides Google and TinyEye, also
Bing, and then you can also inspect many properties of the file at
ImgOps. On the ImgOps page, there are links for inspecting HTTP headers, for encryption analysis, for viewing geo tags and other EXIF, and much more - it is a useful tool for tracking the origins, or for revealing some hidden details about the author, server, location, or camera. ImgOps also lists two additional Reverse Image Search links -
Yandex (Russian SE) and
Baidu (Chinese SE), which can be quite useful too.
Of course, the functionality of all search engines quickly changes, so what I write here for example about the poor performance of Google on B&W or modified images, may not be applicable in a few weeks or months. It is still useful to know that Google is not the only alternative, and that the other options sometimes bring even better results.
Have a look, for example, at the reverse image search of Mick's avatar in Google an in Tiny Eye - the "all sizes" of Google show only completely unrelated faces instead of Mick, just at the very bottom it shows the 48x48 pixels icon. In contrary, TinyEye finds plenty of versions in different sizes, including one of 552x672 pixels at mickwest.com:
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