This guide explains video reverse search.

Below, you’ll find out what is reverse video search, how it works, and get a list of popular reverse video search engines you can use for free to find copies and derivatives of a video source online. You’ll also learn how to do a reverse image search for videos using a desktop computer, iPhone, and Android device.

Consider this your ultimate guide to video reverse search and the top video finder tools for discovering stolen, copied, authorized, and unauthorized use of video content that appears in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing as well as on other websites.

Table of Contents

What Is Video Reverse Search?

Video reverse search is a search engine technology that takes a video image file as an input query and returns results related to the video. Reverse search video helps you find copies and visually similar videos around the web.

How Reverse Video Search Works

Reverse video search works by searching the Internet for a video image file instead of keywords. Video reverse search engines interpret the colors and pixel data in a video image to find exact or similar videos online.

Reverse video search engines use a content-based image retrieval (CBIR) query technique that analyzes the contents of the video source image rather than the metadata, tags, or descriptions associated with the file. The CBIR process uses a sample image to base its search on and removes the need for users to guess at the keywords or terms the video may have been tagged with. CBIR is a type of computer vision that helps users find stolen videos that have had the metadata content stripped away or an altered filename.

Reverse video finders are beneficial for discovering exact duplicates, manipulated versions, and derivative works that appear on web pages around the Internet. However, this reverse video lookup process is not always 100% accurate because the computer vision technology only samples a single video image; not multiple frames. That means a copy of the video source may exist online that doesn’t contain the sampled image being analyzed with CBIR. Therefore, you should upload and scan multiple video screenshots with a reverse video search engine to find all potential that duplicates.

Reverse Video Search Engines

Google Video Reverse Search

Google reverse video search can be used through Google Images. To use this search engine for a video lookup, navigate to Google Images, then select the camera icon to search by image. Next, upload a distinct video image frame and Google will search the image with Google Lens to return results that are duplicates or similar to the screenshot.

Bing Video Reverse Search

Bing is another good reverse video search engine that has a dedicated option for finding similar videos and images on the web.

Navigate to Bing’s Visual Search page and choose the method you want for uploading a video image frame to analyze with CBIR technology. Bing offers ways to perform a video reverse search: drag and drop, take a photo, paste image or URL, or browse for a video image from your computer or phone.

Yandex Reverse Search

Yandex works similarly to reverse video search on Google and Bing but returns results that are indexed in its search engine. Navigate to Yandex Images, then click on the camera icon to upload a video image or website URL to find copies on the Internet.

Shutter Stock Video Search Engine

Shutterstock is a stock photography and video website that has a database with more than 340 million images. It also allows you to perform a video reverse search using its search engine. Shutterstock is a good tool for finding copies and derivatives of a video source that unauthorized users have uploaded to the site to earn money by selling it.

Go to Shutterstock, then click on the camera icon in the search bar. Next, drag and drop a video image frame or upload it from your computer or mobile device. Shutterstock will return results with visually similar videos and photos.

Shutterstock reverse video search engine

Berify Reverse Image Search Video

Berify is a reverse image search video tool that helps you find stolen images and videos. You can use Berify’s image-matching algorithm to search over 800 million images along with image data from all of the major image search engines.

Navigate to Berify’s homepage, then upload or drag and drop a video image file to perform an automatic search. You can run up to 6,000 images for free to find out where they’re being used on the Internet.

TinEye Video Finder

TinEye is another popular reverse video finder that’s similar to Berify. It has both an online search engine and Chrome extension for finding video copies online. TinEye constantly crawls the web to add new images to its index. Currently, it has more than 57 billion images and adds hundreds of millions of new images to the reverse search index every month.

Visit Tineye, then upload or paste a video image into the search engine or provide a URL for the image file. TinEye will return visually similar results that include the image, filename, website URL, first found date, and file size.

Reverse Video Search On Phone

If you want to perform a verse video search on a phone, the following instructions can help with iOS and Android devices.

iOS Image Search Video

Here are the steps for how to reverse video search on iPhone:

Take a screenshot of the video source by pressing the Power button and the Volume Up button simultaneously.
Go to Google Images on your browser.
In Safari, you can click on the camera icon to perform a reverse video search online.
In Chrome, you need to click on the menu icon (…) and choose Request Desktop Site. This will bring up the desktop version of Google Images that includes the camera icon to search images with Google Lens.

Android Video Lookup

Here are the steps for how to do a reverse video lookup on Android phones:

Take a screenshot of video image frame by pressing the Power button and the Volume Down button simultaneously.
Go to Google Images on a Chrome browser.
Click on the camera icon.
Upload the video image screenshot to perform a video reverse search online with Google Lens.

Video Reverse Search Summary

I hope you enjoyed this guide on video reverse search.

As you discovered, reverse video search is a search engine technology that takes a video image file as an input query and returns results related to the video. This process of searching for a video in reverse helps you find copies and visually similar videos around the web. And there are several video search engines and finder tools you can use online for free video lookups.

Stephen Hockman

Stephen Hockman is an entrepreneur and founder of SEO Chatter. He specializes in search engine optimization and digital marketing and has been fascinated with SEO since 2005. His goal is to share the best tips and news about search engine marketing to help you get more website traffic.

Video Reverse Search: What Is It & How to Do It (8 Ways)