You may have already figured out that Google probably knows more about your dead relatives than you do. Among Google’s many free tools is their image search platform. It might help you figure out who is in some of your old, unlabeled photos.
Once you’ve checked with everyone who could possibly know who is in your photos, it’s worth checking to see if Google might have the answer. Google Image Search is quick and easy, too. Here’s how to use it to identify people in those old photos.
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Find an old photo showing someone you’d like to identify and scan the picture if you haven’t already.
I like to crop the image to show just the face so that Google doesn’t try to match extraneous objects in the photo.
Visit Google Image Search and click the camera icon then “choose file” to upload your photo.
Google will search for both exact matches and similar photos as well as pages that contain a match to the image if it finds any. You may not see any exact matches if Google can’t find anyone who looks like the person in the photo. The similar images search results aren’t usually helpful.
In my example, Google located a web page that has a matching image. The man in the photo is Thomas H. Marshall.
If you see scads of search results, you may want to refine your search by adding some keywords to the search box.
How About You?
I can’t wait to hear about your results using Google Image Search for genealogy research!
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