V263:How To Find Original Image Sources on Google

Last week there was some talk about citing sources, particularly image sources, in blog posts, and how it’s not being done enough.  On of the reasons is because it’s so dang easy to re-pin and re-blog images on Pinterest and Tumblr, but it’s not always easy to track down the original source for the image.

Until NOW!

Here’s a magical secret that will change your lives!  Google has a function that allows you to knock in the URL of any image you find on the internet and it will try, and try mightily, to find where it came from.  Here’s how to do it…

1. Here is an image from my 18th Century Shoes Pinterest board.  I pinned it from a Tumblr, but there was no additional information with it, and no link back to the original source.

2. Right click on the image and select “Copy Image URL.”

3. Now in Google Images, the magic happens.  In the search box, on the right side, there is a little camera icon.  Click it…

4. Paste the URL into the box, and click Search.

5. Google will bring up a number of links for where our image appears.  Not all of them are good, but somewhere in there you may either find the original source directly, or a bread crumb to lead you to the original source.  In the case of this image, I found a bread crumb – “Historic Deerfield Museum.”

6. When I searched “Historic Deerfield Museum” on Google, I found the collection and was able to search for “shoes,” and bam, there they were…

7. The last thing to do is go back to my pin on Pinterest and edit the information to include what is on the original source listing, and also the link to get back to the original source.

That’s all!  It’s magic!

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