Find old photos of yourself online

Why an old photo still matches

A reverse image search looks for copies of one file, so a photo nobody reposted leads nowhere. A reverse face search compares the face itself, so a photo you upload today can match pictures taken years earlier by other people. Faces change with age, which is why a search with a recent photo tends to rank recent pages first and a search with an older photo tends to find the older pages. Running one of each gives the fullest picture.

Where old photos of you usually live

• Event and race galleries. Marathons, conferences, weddings and school events often publish every photo the photographer took, indexed by nothing but the date.
• School, university and club websites. Team pages, alumni newsletters and society photo albums stay online for years after you left.
• Local press. Community papers and their archives keep photos of fundraisers, awards and street scenes.
• Forums and abandoned accounts. An avatar on a forum you last used a decade ago is still a public photo of you.
• Reposts and scrapes. Sites that copy public profiles, and stock-style collections built from them, keep old pictures circulating.
• Archived pages. Snapshots of pages that have since been taken down can still be publicly accessible.

How to search for old photos of yourself

1. 1

   Pick two or three photos from different years

   One recent, one from the period you are curious about. Clear, front-facing, one face each. The photo tips page shows what matches well.

2. 2

   Run each photo as its own search

   Start on the search page; the first search is free with no account. Each photo reaches a slightly different set of pages because of how faces age.

3. 3

   Use a deep search for the long tail

   Old pages sit deep in the public web. A deep search reaches further and takes longer; it needs an account and a deep credit.

4. 4

   Open the sources and note the dates

   The page a match came from tells you who published it and when. Save the scan in your history so you can come back without searching again.

Reading what comes back

What to do with what you find

• Decide page by page. Many old photos are harmless. Act on the ones that show something you would not post today, or that sit next to your name and address.
• Ask the publisher first. A short, polite email to the site owner removes most old photos within days.
• Use copyright where you own the picture. If you or a friend took the photo, a DMCA notice applies; see the DMCA page.
• Ask Google to drop it from results if the page will not change; the removal guide walks through the forms.
• Hide your face from FaceSearch results at any time, free, through Remove my photos.

Is searching for old photos of yourself allowed?

Yes. Searching for your own face is the use FaceSearch is built for, and it is lawful everywhere we operate. Searching for other people's old photos, including relatives, follows the acceptable use rules: their consent, a lawful purpose, and never anyone under 18.