Is There a Google Face Search?

Can Google Lens Identify Faces?

Try it with a photo of a friend. Upload it to Google Lens and look at what comes back.

You will usually get three kinds of result:

• Visual matches. Pictures that look similar, which usually means strangers with the same hair, pose or lighting.
• Exact matches. The same image on other pages, if it has been published before.
• Things in the photo. The glasses, the jacket, the landmark behind them, often with shopping links.

Notice what is missing. A name.

That is not a glitch. Google's help pages for Lens and for search by image talk about learning more about an image and the objects in it. Neither says a word about identifying people. Even Google's own showcase for Lens is plants, dogs, artwork, landmarks and text.

So Google can tell you a great deal about a photo. It just does not treat the face as the thing to search. That one design choice explains everything below.

When Google Can Put a Name to a Face

Sometimes you do get a name. Every one of those cases has the same thing in common: somebody had already written the name next to the picture, somewhere on the web.

• Public figures. Actors, politicians and athletes appear in thousands of captioned photos, so a similar image often comes back with its caption attached. Press reports have described Lens recognising well-known people since 2018.
• The exact photo, published with a caption. A news story, a company team page or a public profile Google has crawled. Lens finds the copy, and the page around it does the naming.
• Words in the picture. A name badge, a shirt number, a shop sign. Lens reads text, so it reads those too.

In all three, Google is matching a picture or reading words. The face is along for the ride.

Which is why a different photo of the same person, one that was never published anywhere, usually draws a blank.

Why Google Will Not Name a Private Person

Three things stand in the way, and only one of them is technical.

The photos are not there. Google crawls public web pages. A huge share of personal photos live behind a login: most of Facebook, every private Instagram account, group chats and dating apps. Google never sees them, so it has nothing to match. Our guide to Facebook picture search explains what is actually reachable there, and the same limit is why finding an Instagram account by photo needs a tool that indexed the public profiles first.

Google has chosen not to. In December 2018 Google said its Cloud business would not offer general-purpose facial recognition tools to developers until important technology and policy questions were worked through. That statement was about Google Cloud, not Lens. But it shows how the company sees naming strangers from their faces.

The law is strict about faces. A growing number of places treat face data as biometric data, with consent rules and real penalties attached. Google's own help page for Google Photos notes that its face models may count as biometric data in some jurisdictions.

Google Photos Face Recognition Is a Different Thing

There is one place where Google really does recognise faces. Your own photo library.

Turn on Face Groups in Google Photos and it sorts your pictures by person. Name your sister once and every photo of her is a tap away. By default those groups are visible only to you.

What it cannot do is look outwards. It will not tell you who a stranger in your camera roll is, and it never compares your photos with the internet. Our guide to Google Photos face recognition shows how to switch it on and where it stops.

How to Do a Google Reverse Image Search on a Face

Still worth a try? Yes. It is free, it takes a minute, and if the photo has been published before, nothing finds it faster. Just go in expecting copies of the picture, not the person.

On a computer

1. Open images.google.com and click the camera icon to search by image.
2. Upload the photo or paste its address. Lens opens it.
3. Drag the selection box so it frames the face and shoulders, not the whole scene.
4. Open the exact matches first. Those are the pages where this very picture appears.

On a phone

1. Tap the Lens icon in the Google app's search bar. For a picture on a website, long-press it in Chrome and choose Search image with Google Lens.
2. Pick the photo from your gallery or screenshots.
3. Crop to the face, then check the exact matches.

On an iPhone, our guide to reverse image search on iPhone covers each app step by step.

Lookalikes in the visual matches are not the same person, however close they look. And if nothing useful comes back, that is normal for a private photo. Our guide to why reverse image search finds nothing walks through the usual causes.

Using This Responsibly

Search a face for a good reason. Checking a match before a first date. Making sure a seller or a new contact is who they say. Seeing where your own photos have spread.

Never use it to track down or harass anyone. And treat every result as a lead, not proof, because unrelated people can look alike.

Found your own face somewhere you did not put it? Here is how to remove photos from the internet, starting with the site that hosts them.

Rules on biometric search vary from place to place. This is general information, not legal advice.

Google and Faces: FAQ

Related guides: image search techniques, how to verify a photo and AI people search by photo.

Face search results are leads, not proof of identity. Do not use face search to harass anyone.