How to Perform a Reverse Video Search Online Video Search

A reverse video search lets you find a video’s source, which is useful for a number of reasons. In this article, we’ll discuss the ins and outs of a reverse video search, including how to carry one out and our experiences running different types of reverse video searches.

 

What is a Reverse Video Search?

Normally, when you use a search engine like Google, you plug in words or phrases to find the content you’re looking for, whether that’s a video, image, PDF file, etc. With a reverse video search, instead of looking for the video itself, you’re looking for all the web pages that video appears on.

Reverse video search isn’t just useful for tracking down a viral clip’s origin — it’s become a practical SEO habit for online video search . In fact, for anyone managing a content-heavy WordPress site. If you publish video embeds, product demos, or tutorial content, knowing where that footage originally lives (and where it’s being re-used) tells you a lot about your own link equity and how much authority your content is earning elsewhere online. It’s the same instinct that drives a solid internal linking analysis — you’re mapping where your content actually shows up versus where you assume it does.

How Does a Reverse Video Search Work?

Using the video’s colors and pixels, search engines can find the most similar match online. While this isn’t a foolproof system because accuracy isn’t 100%, it can be helpful when trying to hunt down the locations of an online video.

The accuracy of this type of search relies on proper indexing. If the video you’re searching for isn’t indexed by the search engine, you won’t be able to find it by doing a reverse video search. However, you will likely find content that’s similar to the screenshot you use to look for the video.

This is also where indexing matters on your own site, not just for videos you’re searching for elsewhere. If a video embed on your blog isn’t properly indexed, or the page hosting it has weak internal linking, search engines may struggle to associate it with the right content. Running your site through an internal links tool periodically helps confirm that your video-heavy posts are actually connected to the rest of your site’s architecture, rather than sitting isolated where neither users nor crawlers can easily find them.

4 Reasons for a Reverse Video Search

There are a few different reasons why you may want to run a reverse video search. Let’s go over them.

Find the Video Source

It’s common to come across a video online that’s not posted by the original creator. For example, maybe an article includes a video but doesn’t credit the creator, and you’d like to connect with the creator online. In this case, you could use a reverse video search to find the original source of the video — in other words, where the video appeared for the first time.

Find the Full Version of a Video Clip

When only a portion of a video is shown — maybe the website has a file size limit, for example — doing a reverse video search can direct you to the full-length video.

Find Where Your Video Content is Being Used

If you’re a video creator, doing a reverse search can show you the different places your video is posted online. You can then contact the website or social profile owner to ask them to either take it down or credit the video to you.

Also, seeing where your video is posted aside from your own website or social profiles can give you an idea of your backlink profile.  If you’re building a content strategy around video, it’s worth treating this the same way you’d treat a link building platform — tracking not just where links point, but how much authority they’re actually passing back to you. Pairing this research with link building software that monitors your own site’s internal structure means you’re not just chasing external mentions, you’re also making sure the pages hosting your video content are positioned to capture that authority once it arrives.

Find Content Related to the Video

In addition to showing you other places the video appears, a reverse search will also bring up related content. This is helpful if you’re researching content similar to the video.

Note that the search will return results for articles, images, videos and other types of content, not just videos.

How to Run a Reverse Video Search

Keep video links reliable before you go hunting for sources elsewhere.

Why Video Embeds Go Dead Over Time

Video sources disappear more often than most site owners expect. Creators delete accounts, platforms restructure their URL patterns, and third-party embeds that worked perfectly a year ago can quietly stop resolving. This is especially common with YouTube embed link errors and older iframe-based players that platforms have since deprecated. If you’re running a reverse video search to verify a source, it’s worth remembering the same decay happens on your own site’s video library — just less visibly, since nobody flags it until a reader hits a blank player.

Auditing Your Own Video-Heavy Pages

Before spending time reverse-searching individual embeds one by one, it’s faster to confirm which of your own posts still have working video links in the first place. A broken link checker wordpress sites use for routine maintenance will scan your published content and flag pages where an embed or outbound video link now returns an error, saving you from manually testing every post that includes video.

Automating the Ongoing Cleanup

Once you’ve identified the damage, the smarter move is to stop repeating the audit manually every few months. An online broken link checker that runs on a schedule catches new breakages as they happen, rather than after a reader reports a dead embed. This matters most for how to fix broken video links on WordPress at scale — sites with dozens of video tutorials or product demos accumulate dead embeds faster than they get noticed.

Use Google for a Reverse Video Search

Google doesn’t have the functionality to search for a video. Instead, you’ll use a screenshot from the video and see if Google can match that to the video. Here’s the step-by-step method for using Google for a reverse video search:

1. Go to the video you want to search for and take a screenshot of it.

Take a screenshot of the cover image as well as a few standout frames in the video. If you’re not sure how to take a screenshot on your computer, this article will help.

2. Go to Google Images.

From the Google homepage, click the camera icon on the right of the search bar to use Google Images.

This is what you’ll see:

3. Upload the video screenshot.

Click the upload a file link and select the screenshot from your computer. Google will automatically search for that screenshot once you do that.

4. Adjust the section to search for.

You may want to adjust the part of the screenshot you’re searching for. On the left side of the page, there will be an adjustable white box inside the image you uploaded. Grab and drag the corners to change the portion of the image you want to search for.

Note that the results will update as you change the adjustable box.

5. Review the results.

There will be search results in two areas. First, look on the right side of the page, which will have visual matches and possibly a primary result at the top of the page.

You can also click Find image source above the original image to see more search results.

My Experience Using Google’s Reverse Video Search

I had a difficult time getting Google to find the source video when running a reverse search. First, I tried the pumpkin screenshot in the examples above. There were too many results, and I realized that this image wasn’t taken by the video creator — it seems more like stock footage to me.

Then I thought I’d try a first-person shot of a popular YouTube influencer, so I searched for the following image from this video:

There was only one visual match (an item on Etsy), and there weren’t any results when I clicked Find image source.

It also didn’t make a difference when I searched for a screenshot from an older video from that same creator. I chose one that was a few years old and is the most popular on the channel, knowing Google should’ve definitely indexed it by now. Nothing.

Next, I thought I’d try a frame from the video with both an image and text because that seemed distinctive enough to possibly match on Google. I ran a reverse video search for this screenshot from a surfing video:

The visual matches had a lot of blue surfboards, but my video screenshot wasn’t among them.

I clicked Find image source and had better luck. The top results were from Barefoot Surf, the company that made the video. None of them were to the video, though, or even an article with surfing tips, which is what the video covered.

I tried a few other screenshots from the video but had no luck. I tried similar searches from two other videos about surfing and a video about drumming, but again, I didn’t find the videos I was looking for.

Then I decided to search for the cover image of the video, even though I’d read it’s best not to do that. I took a screenshot of the thumbnail for this video:

That seemed to do the trick. In the visual matches section, the correct video showed up in the first slot.

And in the Find image source section, the correct video was the first result.

Use Bing for a Reverse Video Search

Here’s the step-by-step method for using Bing for a reverse video search:

1. Take a screenshot from the video that you want to search for.

Take screenshots of the cover image and a distinctive frame or two from the video.

2. Go to Bing’s Visual Search.

From the Bing homepage, click the camera icon on the right of the search bar to use Visual Search.

3. Upload one of the screenshots.

Either drag and drop the screenshot or click browse to upload it from your computer. You don’t have to click anything else — Bing will automatically search for the screenshot.

4. Review the results.

On the right side of the page, you’ll see content related to the screenshot you uploaded. See if the video you’re looking for is included.

My Experience Using Bing’s Reverse Video Search

I wanted to compare reverse video search results between Google and Bing, so I used the same screenshots. The first one I searched for was this one:

I still wasn’t able to find the original video, but the “related content” search results were much more thorough than Google’s.

Next, I searched for the surfing video screenshot:

I got back a ton of results, a few revolving around surf lessons, but again, I didn’t find the video this screenshot was taken from:

The last image I tried was this one, which I found on Google:

Just like with Google, I immediately found the link to the YouTube video.

Perform a Reverse Video Search on Mobile

You can also run a reverse video search on an Android or iOS mobile device. You’ll need to take a screenshot for this method, too, and have it saved to your device.

1. Open the Chrome app and go to the search bar.

On Android devices, Chrome is automatically installed, and the Google Lens functionality is built-in.

On iOS devices, the mobile version of the Google Chrome app doesn’t have search-by-image functionality. You’ll have to use the desktop version instead.

Click the three dots icon on the bottom-right of the homepage and scroll down until you see Request Desktop Site. Click it.

2. Upload an image to Google Lens.

On iOS devices, the desktop version of the site isn’t mobile-optimized, so you’ll have to scroll left and right to see the whole page.

On the right of the sidebar, there’s a camera icon. Click it, and then select upload a file. Upload the video screenshot from your device.

3. Refine and browse the results.

You can adjust the interior box over the image you uploaded to focus your search on one area of the image. Look through the search results to the right and by clicking the Find image source link above the original image.

Reverse Video Search Tools That Didn’t Actually Work

These tools show up again and again in “how to do a reverse video search” articles, but they were less effective than Google and Bing. While you may have a different experience, here’s what happened when I used them:

Berify

One of Berify’s best features is that it’s a more thorough reverse image search engine than Google, which means it’ll take longer to crawl the web and find matches. Unfortunately, I uploaded two images, and the “Search in Progress” bar never stopped loading. Eventually, I gave up.

Shutterstock

I ran two searches with Shutterstock, one with a screenshot from an old, very popular YouTube video and the other from that video game thumbnail I’ve been able to find elsewhere. Neither one of them came back with exact-match results.

TinEye

TinEye produced confusing results when I uploaded the video game thumbnail. It returned several results, none of which went to the actual video I was searching for. One went to another video by the same creator, but that was as close as it got.

At first, I thought maybe it found other videos that used that thumbnail, which would be useful for a video creator to unearth. But it didn’t seem that way. Instead, it looked like TinEye found videos with similar graphics but not the actual one I uploaded.

Beyond tracking down where videos live, this whole process is a good reminder to keep your own content’s link health in check. A general broken link checker paired with a dead link checker can catch outdated video embeds before readers do, and running a 404 checker on older posts is a quick way to confirm nothing’s silently broken. For sites managing this at scale, an automatic link building tool combined with link building seo software — ideally through the best interlinking seo plugin for wordpress — turns this from a manual audit into an ongoing background process. It’s also worth applying wordpress internal linking best practices here, since video-heavy posts tend to get overlooked in routine link audits.

Final Thoughts About Reverse Video Searches

Being able to run a reverse video search is a great idea in theory, but it proved harder than expected when experimenting with it. Unless you have the video thumbnail, it may be near impossible to find the video you’re looking for.

For research purposes, though, a reverse video search, particularly on Bing, is helpful. You can find all sorts of related content that can help you decide what to create next for your own website or social media channel.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is a reverse video search and how is it different from a reverse image search?

A reverse video search finds where a video appears online by matching a screenshot or thumbnail rather than searching by keywords. It works the same way a reverse image search does — Google and Bing compare the visual pattern against their index — but since there’s no native “search by video” tool, you’re really running an image search on a still frame pulled from the clip.

2. How do I know if someone reposted my video without permission?

Take a screenshot of a distinctive frame or your video’s thumbnail and run it through Google Lens or Bing Visual Search. Any page hosting a visually matching image will surface in the results, even if the video itself was re-uploaded or embedded without credit. This is also a useful way to spot where your content is quietly building backlink value you didn’t know about.

3. Why do video embeds on my WordPress site stop working over time?

Creators delete accounts, platforms change their URL structure, and old iframe-based players get deprecated — all of which leave a dead embed sitting on a page nobody’s checked in months. Running a broken link checker periodically catches these before a reader lands on a blank video player instead of your content.

4. Does LinkWhisper help with more than just internal text links?

Yes — LinkWhisper’s link health reporting isn’t limited to text-based internal links. It flags any internal link returning an error, including links pointing to pages that host embedded video content, so video-heavy posts get the same ongoing audit as the rest of your site.

5. What’s the fastest way to audit a content-heavy site for broken or orphaned pages?

Rather than manually testing every post, an internal links tool scans your entire site at once, flagging pages with zero inbound links alongside any broken outbound or internal links it finds — video posts included.

6. Is there a free way to check my site’s internal linking and broken links?

LinkWhisper offers a free internal link checker that scans your published posts in about 60 seconds, surfacing orphaned pages, broken links, and an overall link health score without requiring the full plugin install.

7. Can reverse video search research actually improve my site’s SEO?

Indirectly, yes. Tracking where your video content resurfaces elsewhere tells you where you’re earning unlinked mentions and potential backlink opportunities. Feeding that into a proper link building platform means you’re not just finding the mentions — you’re using them to strengthen your site’s overall link equity.