How to Use Google Image Search to Find Images of Faces

Written by: Tom · July 12, 2008 at 1:00 pm · Category: Google Images, Search Tips 

A little known fact about Google Image search is that it literally has the capability to recognize when an image is of a person’s face or not. Although not 100% perfect, it works surprisingly well.

How Do You Use it?

All you have to do is add &imgtype=face to the end of the URL in the address bar of your web browser after performing a Google Image Search.

For example, if you perform a Google Image Search for the keyword robin, you will get the following results:

Google Image Search Results for Keyword Robin

These results aren’t very helpful if you are looking for a person named Robin. You would have to scroll through dozens of search results before finding what you are looking for.

However, if you go up to the address bar and append &imgtype=face to the end of the web address, and hit enter, you will get noticeably different results:

Google Image Search Results for Keyword Robin &imgtype=face to Show Faces

Clarification

In case you are wondering, the web address that displayed the first set of results where we saw mostly birds was: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=robin&gbv=2 (link opens in new window).

The URL that got us the faces, as shown in the second set of search results was: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=robin&gbv=2&imgtype=face (link opens in new window).

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